Implementing RCM to SAP R3
plans, a structured approach was required
Provided by
Transfield Maintenance
Introduction
Transfield Maintenance were originally
contracted at Queensland Nickels Yabulu
refinery to provide non-core maintenance
services including building, rigging and
scaffolding services, the workshop and
garage services, as well as all painting and
sandblasting. This contract was then
expanded to include the core maintenance
activities compromising maintenance for
the refinery plant and equipment, fuel and
oil facilities and the wharf unloader. The
contract included all the administrative
duties of maintenance planning,
performance and recording. Also in the
contract were the supply activities for all
materials, which included the sourcing,
purchasing, optimisation, warehousing and
distribution of these materials. The supply
contract excluded raw materials, fuel and
production chemicals.
As part of the contract agreement,
Transfield were required to configure and
implement the plant maintenance and
materials management modules of SAP
R3.0D, the Computerised Maintenance
Management System (CMMS) used on
site. This involved commitment of staff to
the project, completion of SAP training,
data cleansing and conversion, inventory
audits and rationalisation, cataloguing of
equipment, drawings, documents and
materials, as well as the establishment of
maintenance plans for critical equipment.
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In order to populate SAP with maintenance
to ensure that that the correct amount of
maintenance was performed on the correct
equipment. Reliability Centred
Maintenance (RCM) is a proven
methodology for the development of
maintenance plans. The RCM Turbo
(Maintenance Plan Development System)
software package was the tool used to
facilitate the RCM process. This allowed
for a quicker overall assessment, and
documents the failure mode data and
assumptions, on which the maintenance
strategy is based, to be documented. This
is essential for the development of a
formalised constant improvement process.
The first step in the process was the
development of an equipment register
followed by a comprehensive criticality
assessment. The RCM Turbo software
tool was used for this criticality
assessment, which by using a fuzzy
logic question set, prioritises equipment
based firstly on equipment whose failure
constitutes a breaching of safety,
environmental and statutory standards,
followed by equipment whose failures
impact on production. The results of this
assessment gave equipment a rating on a
scale of 1 to 16, 1 being the most critical.
Once the criticality assessment was
complete, it was then possible to determine
where to begin the RCM assessment.
Obviously, the place to start was at the
most critical equipment and then working
down through the criticality listing until all
key equipment had been analysed.
Maintenance steering committees were set
up around the site to assist with the
criticality assessment and the RCM
process.
26/6/1998
These steering committees included
representatives of both Process
(Queensland Nickel) and Maintenance
(Transfield) ranging from, on the
operations side of the business, the
Engineering Manager, Production
Superintendents, Crew Leaders through to
control room operators, and from the
Maintenance Side, Area Maintenance
Engineers, Planners, Foremen, and
Tradesmen. All members of the
maintenance steering committees were
provided with RCM training prior to the
project being undertaken, to enable them
to provide the best support possible to the
RCM team. The most important function
of these committees was the challenge and
approval of all maintenance strategies
before being implemented into the SAP
CMMS. This allowed for the best possible
strategy being developed up-front as well
as providing ownership of the strategies
to the people who will be using them.
Objectives of This Presentation
Clients have benefited significantly by
implementing the RCM Turbo system to
manage everything from SAP work orders
and Production Resource Tools (PRT) to
purchase and inventory.
RCM Turbo supports the progressive
implementation of RCM principles. With
easy-to-use data entry screens for data
collection, operations and maintenance
employees can correctly record every
equipment failure and downtime
occurrence, including minor but costly
recurring problems. From this data, the
most accurate and detailed downtime and
failure analyses can be developed.
By tracking and analyzing equipment
availability, total equipment downtime,
and operational downtime to identify the
root causes and frequency of failures and
downtime, preventive maintenance or even
permanent solutions can be undertaken.
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The results : your equipment performs
more effectively, your operations run more
smoothly, and your overall maintenance
costs are substantially reduced.
RCM Turbo (Maintenance Plan
Development System) has been used to
develop a maintenance hierarchy structure
that could be loaded up into the PM (Plant
Maintenance) module of SAP R3. In the
development of the hierarchy structure, the
plant was broken down into 8 Business
Units so that costing for different facilities
could be captured.
RCM Turbo is a planning and analysis tool
to advise the correct scheduling of
maintenance work within the maintenance
management system. It will help optimise
and utilise the maintenance resources on
the site.
The assessment was performed using
RCM Turbo team member, key area
people, engineering staff and plant
resources.
These levels consist of BOMs for
functional locations, equipment and also
materials. Task lists have been grouped at
productive unit levels, designed around
preventive checks being performed within
3 boundaries, isolated, shutdown or
running condition.
Because of certain change condition within
the PM module of SAP, data being up
loaded into SAP should be thoroughly
developed so that the system can perform
as a maintenance management system.
Implementing the strategic plan
specifically address the four points.
These were :
1. Engineering Standards : to improve
engineering standards to best
practice levels (at trades level,
supervision and planning level and
in engineering)
26/6/1998
2. Engineering Systems: to deliver
Word Best Practice reliability
and maintenance engineering.
3. Customer Relations : to design and
implement communication plan by
customer.
4. Leadership Development : to
design and prepare training
materials, define required roles and
responsibilities, identify key
performance measures and target
and set-up KPI' and measuring
strategies success.
Company Background
Transfield Maintenance is one of the
Australias leading maintenance service
providers. The company carries out over
$400 million per annum of maintenance
activities across Australia with clients in
governments and the private sector.
Transfield Maintenance meets a variety of
customers requirements ranging from
large scale fully integrated plant
maintenance delivery involving labour,
equipment, and material resources to one
off assignments assessing such issues as
strategic planning, maintenance
engineering, CMMS implementation and
reliability engineering.
Transfield Maintenance operates an ISO
9002 compliant quality system and
achieves high standards of performance in
safety. A disciplined continuous
improvement program is a central part of
the companys philosophy delivering best
maintenance practices to our customers.
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Transfield Maintenance provides
consulting services, on a fee basis, to assist
customers in planning and carrying out the
deployment of large scale asset
maintenance solutions.
In many cases, customers are able to install
and implement CMMS systems and
perform any necessary customisation
themselves with only limited assistance
from Transfield. In other cases,
particularly where a complex, integrated
solution or extensive customisation is
required. Transfield provides extensive
implementation planning, project
management, network communications,
system integration and custom
modification services. The companys
professional services group has expert
knowledge of CMMSs products and RCM
tools, is familiar with the concepts and
theories of maintenance and planning and
cost analysis, and can draw upon
experience in implementing systems
addressing diverse applications on a
number of different platform in a wide
range of industries worldwide.
Transfield Maintenance Philosophy
Develop maintenance strategic plan so
that maintenance is planned and
managed such that it provides an
efficient continuous operating facility
at all times
Maintenance is treated as an
investment and not a cost
Maintenance will show a positive
return on investment through improved
profitability of the Transfield
operations
26/6/1998
Continuous Operational Improvement
The RCM assessment now being complete,
and the developed and approved
maintenance strategies now input into the
SAP CMMS system, the final step was to
develop the procedures for facilitating
constant improvement. This involves
training of the Area Maintenance Engineer
and the Area Planners in the use of the
RCM Turbo software package. Ideally,
every corrective maintenance activity
should be reviewed using the RCM Turbo
software to allow adaptation to ever
changing plant conditions. This will
ensure that unplanned activities can be
assessed in a structured, unbiased way to
ensure a cost effective strategy can be put
in place which will avoid the consequences
of that particular unplanned failure from
occurring again.
Hearing Best Maintenance Practice
Strategies
1. People and Culture
2. Maintenance Strategy
3. Maintenance Organisation
4. Contractor Management
5. Maintenance Planning and Scheduling
6. Shutdown Planning and Control
7. Maintenance Budgeting
8. Maintenance Costs
9. Maintenance Performance
10. Maintenance Analysis
11. Maintenance Management System
12. Preventive and Predictive Maintenance
13. Material Management
People and Culture
Regular meaningful performance
reviews
Conduct skills evaluation and develop
skills matrix
Perform training needs analysis and
develop training program before the
training $ value for the next
maintenance budget
Job descriptions need to be developed
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Additional engineering support
requirements need to be clearly
identified and established
Reliability Engineering Group must
address future maintenance
improvement issues
Maintenance Strategy
Overall maintenance strategy must
address People, Systems, Analysis,
Processes, Spares and Technology
aspects
A good maintenance strategy should:
Support the BU strategy
Be easily understood and widely
accepted
Provide unity of purpose, clear
direction and the focus for the maintenance
effort.
Develop a maintenance strategy which
is driven by the Business Strategy
Develop a maintenance culture where
continuous improvement and learning
become a way of life.
Being customer focused and process
driven
Achieving the full participation of all
the people
Maintenance strategy - foundation for
Continuous Improvement
Better equipment and process
reliability allows achievement of
product sales targets
Reduce equipment breakdown
maintenance to (5%) of total
maintenance
Reduce Unit costs by achieving
significant reduction in maintenance
costs
Cost reductions without sacrificing
reliability and compromising safety
and the environment.
Reduce the right maintenance costs
Cover extent of maintenance on all
critical equipment, performance
measures and targets
26/6/1998
Maintenance Organisation
Optimal maintenance organisation
reflected by ratios:
The number of maintenance
performing personnel to the number
of support personnel.
The span of control of the
maintenance supervisors.
The number of planning support
personnel.
Calculated for larger sites less
meaningful for small sites
Contractor Management
Implement improved contractor costs
feedback process for better control
Obtain accumulated costs from
maintenance management system
Introduce more regular and
comprehensive progress performance
reporting
Maintenance Planning and Scheduling
Get management direction on future
computerised maintenance
management system implementation
Practical Standardised Process
guidelines
Refine and standardise short term
maintenance planning and scheduling
processes:
Processing and prioritising
incoming work requests
Outline short-term scheduling
processes based on job priorities
and available resources
Guidelines must be issued
regarding the development of
weekly short-term plan
Develop backlog management
process
Establish labour time estimates for
planned jobs as well as for other
standard jobs
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Develop standardised guidelines for
history collection which address:
Responsibility for collecting
history
Defined criteria for collecting
history
Define the processes and criteria to
be used when cleaning up the
existing history
How current history can be
collected in a format that can be
easily converted into the future
maintenance management system
Develop standard guidelines for the
use and application of failure codes
Develop comprehensive set of
planning and scheduling performance
indicators:
Which measures should be used to
determine backlog, schedule
compliance and the extent of
planned maintenance
Definition and calculation of each
of the measures
Targets to consider, production
requirements, criticality, limited
available resources and logistical
problems
Develop guidelines to ensure
compliance with statutory requirements
and record keeping in regard to:
What type of statutory testing
required, based on the equipment in
use.
Who must perform the different
types of inspections and testing
At what frequencies the various
tests and inspections needed to be
performed
Requirements for minimum
statutory records to be kept for
different equipment.
Development of common forms
and documents to be used for
recording test results and record
keeping
26/6/1998
Shutdown Planning and Control
A standard procedure which specifies
the process and required extent of
shutdown planning should be
developed
Register required items as stock and
develop BOM listings for shutdowns
Establish weekly shutdown progress
meetings
Develop quantitative measures for
shutdown performance
Maintenance Budgeting
Refine budgeting processes, and
various documents used already
Recommendations for improved
budgeting:
Obtain future production estimates
and estimates of equipment
utilisation
Project all future preventive and
routine maintenance services in a
monthly time phased schedule for
each major piece of equipment
Prepare detailed worksheets per
piece of equipment which
summarise the details from the
monthly schedule
Use failure analysis data (once
available) to make prediction of
common failures
Make allowances in the budget for
high failure probabilities
Maintenance Costs Control
Processes to obtain actual equipment
maintenance costs against budgeted
costs
Set targets and measure maintenance
costs
Report preventive and corrective
maintenance costs
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Develop standardised guidelines and
formats for accumulating, reporting
and trending monthly maintenance
costs for areas of responsibility and by
major plant/equipment
Measure maintenance costs as a
percentage of the ERV (Equipment
Replacement Value). Target between
1% and 3%
Set up guidelines for proportionate
allocation of costs to the correct cost
centres
Develop a top ten analysis of
maintenance costs from the available
cost data
Maintenance Performance
Measurement
Planning and Scheduling Performance
measures
Clearly defined availability targets for
the highly critical equipment
Targets relate to plant usage required
by production
Consider other performance measures
such as equipment utilisation and usage
Develop and graph availability trends
for specific highly critical equipment
Establish baseline availability to allow
improvements to be recorded
Report reliability performance
measures for critical equipment:
number of failures
failure rates
MTBFs
Set realistic reliability performance
targets based on equipment criticality
and failure consequences
Establish baseline reliability
performance of critical equipment
26/6/1998
Maintenance Analysis
Allocate responsibility for performing
maintenance analysis
Conduct Reliability Engineering and
Failure Analysis training
Starting point - development of a
comprehensive equipment register
Develop standard guidelines for
equipment criticality assessment
Perform criticality assessments which
categorise equipment based on
consequences of failure
Establish Equipment Maintenance
Strategy development training
requirements and conduct training (e.g.
RCM)
Remove ineffective maintenance
conducted on some equipment
Develop a comprehensive maintenance
plan, for critical equipment which
includes:
Development of preventive
maintenance schedules
Revision of existing routine
maintenance and zonal inspections
(carried out by operators)
Establish standard work
instructions and job safe procedures
(relating to safety requirements)
Establish a spares planning process
for preventive maintenance and
shutdowns
Develop implementation guidelines for
Reliability Engineering techniques
Once fundamentals implemented,
consider:
Root cause analysis
Probabilistic failure analysis
Equipment design review analysis
Availability block diagramming
and fault tree analysis
Failure Modes, Effects and
Criticality Analysis (FMECA)
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Maintenance Management System
SAP IMPLEMENTATIONS
Establish detailed implementation plan
which complements the total SAP
implementation plan and addresses:
Procedure guidelines detailing how
SAP is to be operated and set up on
site
Backup processes to be used when
the system is not operational
Conversion of existing history,
including assessment and filtering.
Setting up of Preventive
Maintenance schedule information
Setting up standard work
instructions and job safe procedures
Setting up Bills of Material (BOM)
structure
Setting up parameters to allow
daily work order management,
work request entry, work
prioritisation, scheduling, history
collection and projected work plan
generation
Filtering data and load existing
history from manual sheets
Loading all preventive maintenance
schedules that still need to be
developed
Loading BOMs for all major
critical equipment
Developing implementation plan
for stores module setup and
integration with maintenance
module
Develop manuals and procedures
on how to effectively use the
system
Identify and customise SAP reports to
provide the required information, for
planning and scheduling, history
analysis, failure codes and downtime
data collection
Develop and implement interfaces
processes to allow maintenance costs
collected in SAP to be transferred to
Supply and Accounting systems
26/6/1998
Preventive and Predictive Maintenance
Revise existing maintenance schedule
documentation
Add additional schedule tasks required
and remove tasks found to be
ineffective or not applicable
Develop daily and weekly routine
checklists (where required) and define
responsibility for executing them
Establish and implement regular
lubrication schedules for all plant and
field equipment
Establish formalised spares planning
process to minimise spares
unavailability for planned maintenance
activities in future
Assess condition monitoring
requirements for all critical equipment
at each site
Establish formal conditional
monitoring programs focused on the
following areas:
The oil sampling and analysis
currently being performed
The feasibility and benefit from
conducting regular vibration
analysis on major rotating
equipment
The possible introduction of
thermographics as a tool for
predicting potential electrical
equipment failures
Vibration monitoring and thickness
testing should be carried out by
experienced maintenance personnel
These personnel had sufficient
specialist skills or knowledge to
effectively conduct measurements or
analyse the results
Establish feasibility of condition
monitoring tasks
Develop long-term plans which include
the following :
Projected preventive maintenance
and shutdown activities for at least
two years ahead
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Should be based on production
requirements and anticipated
equipment utilisation
Structure process to keep plans up
to date
Use long term plans as a basis for
developing future budgets, and
shorter term maintenance plans
Materials Management
Purchasing related procedures were
documented
Develop general stores procedures and
inventory optimisation procedures
Develop generic procedure for cycle
counting and implement
comprehensive cycle counting
programs
Develop more formal issuing process
whereby spares are issued against a
valid approved Work Order printed
from the maintenance management
system
Develop guidelines regarding the
apportionment of costs for specific
spares issues
Establish and implement
comprehensive set of performance
measures including:
Customer service level
Stock accuracy
Stock on hand value
Stock turns for different categories
Conduct formal risk assessments which
balance consequences of not stocking
spares against the cost of holding them
Evaluate Min and Max quantities for
all critical spares
Establish and implement basic ABC
classification of the stocks by usage
value
Evaluate maintenance and operations
spares as possible consignment stock
and set up agreements
26/6/1998
 Define responsibilities for achieving
inventory reduction against acceptable
services levels
Identify the responsibility for
expediting and establish a formal
expediting process
Evaluate and streamline the re-ordering
process for stock items
Establish formal purchasing
performance measures, such as
measuring the quantity and lateness of
orders
Implement a more structured spares
planning process at the plant to
decrease spares unavailability problems
Implementing RCM - What works and
why
1. Having senior management support
By having senior management being seen
to support the project the workforce will
initially be open towards the RCM
process. Establishing an RCM program is
very resource intensive and with out the
support of the entire plant it becomes very
difficult. The support must begin at the
top level and filter down. Using personnel
with plant experience to assist the RCM
process is essential.
2. Getting ownership of project by
areas.
Maintenance steering committee specific
to each area in the plant was formed. The
committees were made up of the
superintendent, engineers, foremen,
planners and a RCM facilitator. These
committees discussed the results of the
rcm project, whether or not maintenance
strategies proposed were sound, on what
basis decisions had been made in the past
etc. By involving maintenance personnel
from all levels there is a feeling of
ownership generated and the results of the
RCM project will be more readily
accepted.
Page 9
The committee also develops a renewed
understanding of the plant when being
questioned about how things run.
3. Begin with small steps
Initially focus attention on a single area
that maintenance personnel consider to be
a problem area. By going through the
RCM process and then implementing plans
the maintenance personnel can see the
final results of the RCM project in that
specific area, highlighting its value and
encouraging the continuation of the
process.
4. Flexibility
Maintenance strategies are not set in stone.
The RCM project involves setting up
strategies based on assumptions about
criticality, cost of downtime, cost of repair
etc. These conditions may change and in
turn effect the maintenance strategy
effectiveness. A continual optimisation
program is a necessity.
Some interesting perspectives:
Maintenance is treated as an
investment and not a cost
Bruce Coats
By involving maintenance personnel
from all levels there is a feeling of
ownership generated and the results of
the RCM project will be more readily
accepted
Matthew Dalton
RCM is essential for the development
of a formalised constant improvement
process
Philip Crawford
Continuous improvement is a
fundamental building block of our
maintenance strategy
David Williamson
26/6/1998