Don’t Focus On Wrench Time to Justify Planning & Scheduling ROI

Maintenance organizations often have similar motivations for reassessing their planning and scheduling processes. These include addressing a lack of visibility into resource availability, managing out-of-control backlogs, or responding to management pressure to reduce maintenance budgets.

Currently, over 67% of business cases for planning and scheduling software focus primarily on improving wrench time through scheduling solutions and process reviews. It’s widely known that the average Hands on Tool Time (HOTT) for most companies ranges between 25% and 35%. However, companies employing best practices in planning and scheduling report wrench times of 60% and higher. What accounts for this significant difference?

These improvements invariably attract the attention of upper management and C-level executives, particularly in today’s economy, which emphasizes optimization and savings. Consider this example: For a workforce of 100 technicians, achieving a 35% improvement in wrench time can result in potential annual savings of $2,275,000—based on an average cost of $65,000 per technician. These savings directly impact the company’s EBITDA, making HOTT improvements a compelling justification for investing in planning and scheduling solutions.

However, this focus on wrench time improvements is fundamentally flawed. Here’s why.

Imagine an average chemical site or any large industrial facility. If you ask the CEO about the company’s mission statement for the year, it often boils down to selling more products at lower costs while maintaining high quality. Nowhere will you hear about ensuring that craftspeople are continuously busy throughout their workday. The business isn’t about keeping employees occupied—it’s about optimizing productivity.

While $2,275,000 in potential savings sounds appealing, it must align with your corporate and maintenance strategies. In rare scenarios, this strategy may be acceptable, such as during systematic layoffs or periods of significantly reduced production when you wish to maintain maintenance quality. However, let’s consider a more likely scenario where production orders are abundant, and operations are running at full capacity.

In such cases, unplanned downtime is extremely costly. A mature planning and scheduling process, supported by tools providing real-time insights and enabling quick decision-making, can utilize that additional 35% workforce for more impactful tasks.

External contractors are expensive—sometimes costing double or triple compared to internal resources, depending on service contracts and skill levels. The right scheduling tool can optimize work allocation and identify who is best suited for specific tasks. Often, 10% of contracted work can be reassigned to internal resources, effectively doubling savings.

Example Calculation: Improving wrench time by 10% for the same workforce results in $227,500 in annual savings. Reassigning 10% of contractor work (costing double) adds another $455,000 in savings. This shift changes the business case from wrench time savings to substantial contractor cost reduction.

With 25% more labor available, consider these strategies:

• Opportunity Maintenance: Use insights from work orders to perform maintenance opportunistically, reducing costs significantly.
• Proactive Planning: A reactive work order is 7-9 times more expensive than a planned one. The more you can plan, the cheaper and safer your maintenance becomes, reducing MRO inventory and incidents.
• Backlog Reduction: Managing backlogs ensures all work, including HSE orders, is controlled, preventing emergency work later.
• Preventative Maintenance Compliance: Ensure preventative maintenance is timely and as planned, avoiding undermining investments in reliability solutions.
• Early Failure Detection: Conduct more inspections to detect and address failures early.

These enhancements not only improve resource availability but also significantly impact Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). For many companies, especially in industrial organizations, the multiplier effect can be 4x or more.

A well-planned maintenance organization also benefits other areas, including reducing MRO costs, minimizing injuries, improving product quality with less rework, and ensuring on-time production. Adoption of EAM systems improves, knowledge transfer is facilitated, data becomes available for quality analysis, and planning and scheduling efforts are reduced, leading to happier employees, satisfied customers, and content stakeholders.

Implementing these strategies positions your company for long-term success, aligning maintenance processes with broader business objectives and driving continuous improvement.Visit www.sigga.com to see our Planning & Scheduling software and our Empower EAM solution to help improve your OEE.

Diamond Sponsor at Asset Performance 2024: