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Enhancement of maintenance management through benchmarking

Article  in  Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering · December 2000

DOI: 10.1108/13552510010373419

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JQME
6,4 Enhancement of maintenance
management through
benchmarking
224 Richard C.M. Yam, Peter Tse, Li Ling and Francis Fung
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Keywords Maintenance, Benchmarking, Decision making, Energy industry, Utilities
Abstract The market-oriented competitive environment in electric utilities has forced many
power plants to become more conscious of the role of maintenance management in enhancing
their equipment performances and consequently improving the quality of their services. Good
equipment maintenance practices can improve the reliability of the power system; maintenance
has become the prominent management issue for electric utilities. In recent years, power plants
have started using benchmarking to identify the best practices for enhancing their maintenance
works. In this paper, a case on benchmarking for maintenance management in a large-scale
power plant is analyzed. Benchmarking is used to search for optimum methods for maintenance
management practices in order to improve the overall effectiveness of the operations and
maintenance of the plant. By adopting the best practices appropriately, benchmarking could help
plants to become more cost-effective in maintenance. However, for plants looking for
breakthrough improvement in maintenance, on top of benchmarking, other means, i.e.
intelligent decision support system (IDSS) for maintenance, are required as well.

Journal of Quality in Maintenance
Engineering, Vol. 6 No. 4, 2000, pp.
224-240. # MCB University Press,
1355-2511
Introduction
The electric utility industry is relatively technology oriented with bulky
sophisticated equipment and valuable assets requiring heavy capital
investment. In the past, with a few exceptions, traditional electric utilities were
publicly owned and protected by regulations within governmentally
determined territories with few new entrants (DeMarie and Keats, 1995). Many
electric utilities tried to maximize reliability of equipment and plant with less
emphasis on costs and quality of their operations and maintenance (O&M)
(Makansi, 1994). But nowadays things have been changing very rapidly,
electric utilities are facing growing fiercely external competitive pressure.
Economical, technological, social and political transitions make them gradually
transfer from a regulation-protected to a more open market-driven competitive
environment. Customers want the best quality of electricity at the lowest price.
There is little public tolerance of catastrophic failure for electric utility
infrastructure (Collacott, 1977). Consequently many electric utilities are
searching for good maintenance management methodologies and practices in
order to reduce cost while improving equipment reliability and plant
availability.
The authors wish to acknowledge the support from the concerned organizations and the
research project ``Decision support system for equipment diagnosis and maintenance
management: an artificial intelligence approach'' funded by the Strategic Research Grant of
the City University of Hong Kong.
 In recent years, benchmarking approach has attracted more attention in Enhancement of
electric utility industries. Many electric utilities use benchmarking as a maintenance
management tool to: management
. identify strengths and weaknesses of their O&M;
. learn from leading organizations;
. search for the world's best practices; 225
. work with superior business process performance.
A study of the electric utility industries by the Arrington Group, Maitland, Fla,
reported that 92 per cent of 115 electric utilities surveyed in the USA considered
making a benchmarking visit to other utilities (Stewart, 1996). Although it has
been recognized that benchmarking can act as a powerful management tool to
improve the quality of O&M, and to change the culture of organizations, the
application of benchmarking on comprehensive maintenance management in
electric utilities is not very often found in literature.

Maintenance ± a prominent management issue at power plants

Reliable and stable supply of electric power is fundamental to the economic
development and social security of a society. Power plant is the core power-
generating unit of an electric utility; any breakdown of generating unit would
lead to extremely expensive social and economic consequence to a society. In
the past, maintenance in power plants was simply regarded as a difficult-to-
control technical part, at that time the equipment was installed with basic
protection system intended to minimize system damage during failures (Patelli
et al., 1994). However, the market-oriented competitive environment in electric
industry has forced power plants to become more conscious of the role of
maintenance management in their operations. The quality of maintenance
works would not only directly affect the technical performance of the plant but
also of the cost-effectiveness of its operations and services to customers. On top
of an important technical consideration, maintenance has become a more
prominent management issue in power plants.
Maintenance is the combination of all technical and administrative actions,
intended to retain an item in, or restore it to a state in which it can perform its
required function (British Standards Institution, 1993). Equipment
maintenance management in a power plant involves rather complicated
processes. It includes routine, preventive, predictive, emergency and corrective
maintenance employed in mechanical, electrical, thermal, and instrumentation
and control areas. Maintenance management supports the effective production
process by eliminating and reducing the frequency and the severity of
equipment failures. In order to increase the economic benefits of plants by
improving availability, flexibility, and operability of equipment in a cost-
effective manner, it is necessary to have a well-structured and lean organization
for maintenance. Sound maintenance management strategy and policy, up-to-
date maintenance technology, and reliable maintenance service systems are
JQME equally important. Searching for the best-in-the-class optimum practices is an
6,4 important part for changing the maintenance management practice in power
plants. Benchmarking with the leading power plants in the world can be a
quick and efficient way to achieve this result.

What is ``benchmarking''?
226 Benchmarking is one of the most powerful and available performance
management tools that can strengthen all business aspects of an organization
(Anderson and Pettersen, 1996). Benchmarking was originally defined by the
Xerox Corporation in the Unite Station as a management tool for monitoring
and measuring its products, services, and practices against it competitors in the
late 1970s (Pulat, 1994). Since then, benchmarking has been widely adopted in
many different industries, and a lot of publications have been issued in this
area (Chen, 1994; Dale, 1996; Khade and Metlen, 1996; Stewart, 1996; Zairi,
1996; Zairi and Youssef, 1995; Bagchi, 1997; Luxhnj et al., 1997; Sueur and Dale,
1997; Voss et al., 1997). Nowadays benchmarking is defined as a process of
systematic and continuous measuring and comparing one's business processes
against comparable processes in leading organizations to obtain information
that will help organizations to identify strengths and weaknesses of their
existing performance (Anderson and Pettersen, 1996). Benchmarking not only
can act as a valuable information tool to support quality-led continuous
improvement programs or business process re-engineering (BPR) of an
organization, but also can cause a change of the attitude and behavior of
people. A survey of benchmarking exchange members conducted in 1995
showed that benchmarking is one of the top five most popular business
management processes (Elmuti et al., 1997).

Background of the benchmarking case

A benchmarking process on maintenance management comparing with 72
other power plants in the world was performed in a large-scale power plant.
The benchmarked power plant is one of the largest single coal/oil fired power
plants in the world with total installed electrical generating capacity of 4,100
megawatts (MW). In the past, the primary aim of this power plant was to
produce electricity with very high availability and reliability of equipment, and
to achieve high thermal efficiencies of electricity. In recent years, due to the
commissioning of other new power stations and the slow down of economy in
the area, the maximum demand for this plant has been leveled off. The
challenges facing the power plant have forced it to downsize the organization
and minimize the O&M costs. Alongside the reduction of manpower, a series of
management change processes have been executed in the past few years. The
general changes include flattening organizational structure to improve
communication, introducing team concept to change the working attitude of
staff, using multi-skill practices to replace the inefficient single-disciplined
approach, empowering lower level of staff to take up more responsibilities, and
implementing reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) to optimize the
traditional maintenance practices. Although these changes have substantially Enhancement of
improved the quality of its O&M, the plant is still aiming at enhancing the maintenance
effectiveness of its O&M to comparable or exceeding the world's leading management
organizations in the power industry. These pressures have directed the power
plant to conduct a benchmarking process in order to find out the best
maintenance practices in the world and to identify the gaps and weaknesses of
its maintenance works away from the best practices. 227
Benchmarking process
The benchmarking process with special emphasis on maintenance
management in the power plant consisted of the following steps:
(1) identifying the key maintenance performance variables that need to be
benchmarked;
(2) selecting good information sources for benchmarking;
(3) collecting and measuring maintenance data;
(4) normalizing and adjusting the collected and measured maintenance
information to a meaningful database;
(5) analyzing the maintenance data against other organizations that are
known to be superior performers in the world;
(6) changing and improving the maintenance performances.

Step 1: identifying the key performance variables that need to be benchmarked

The key performance variables were identified first in the benchmarking
process. These factors were important to support quality-led continuous
improvement programs for the plant. In order to overcome the lack of data
standardization and information sources of benchmarking, the identified
maintenance performance variables were identical to the variables used by
other benchmarking partners around the world. The key performance variables
of maintenance which have been identified are listed as follows:
(1) maintenance management models;
(2) overall equipment maintenance performance:
. equipment maintenance productivity level,
. maintenance service level;
(3) maintenance organization and management:
. maintenance organization structure,
. human resources management;
(4) maintenance planning and control:
. work order planning and control,
. outage planning and control,
. spare parts inventory control.
JQME Step 2: selecting good benchmarking information sources
6,4 It is recognized that benchmarking with other direct competitors in the same
industry is difficult because it will unavoidably involve the releasing or sharing
of sensitive information. In order to overcome this difficulty and handle the
benchmarking process smoothly, most organizations employ a third party to
provide benchmarking information sources on a confidential basis to support
228 the benchmarking process. A previous study has shown that all the large
electric utilities (over 2 million electric customers), 77 per cent of the medium-
sized (1 to 2 million electric customers) and 69 per cent of the small electric
utilities (less than 1 million electric customers) used consultants in their
benchmarking processes (Edison Electric Institute, 1993). Following this trend
the benchmarked power plant also employed a benchmarking consultant
company to provide a benchmarking database for its benchmarking analysis.

Step 3: collecting and measuring internal maintenance data

Internal maintenance management data were collected and measured through
an overall review of the current maintenance management practices in the
plant. The detailed methodologies were:
. interviews with maintenance managers and other relevant persons;
. questionnaire survey in the operation and maintenance departments.
The internal maintenance management data were collected and measured in
the following three areas:
(1) General information:
. labor data,
. generating unit design data,
. generating unit operating data;
(2) Maintenance performance management:
. work order management,
. outage management,
. spare parts inventory management;
(3) Maintenance processes:
. maintenance work services,
. miscellaneous services.

Step 4: normalizing and adjusting the collected and measured maintenance

information data to a meaningful database
In order to compare the collected and measured maintenance management data
with other benchmarking partners in the world, the collected and measured
maintenance information was normalized and adjusted to a meaningful
database. The data were first adjusted for inflation, regional wages and salaries
difference, then normalized according to the size of the electricity generating Enhancement of
unit, and finally adjusted for the differences in key operating and design maintenance
factors. The main objective of data normalization was to ensure fair management
comparisons in the benchmarking process.

Step 5: analyzing the maintenance data against other organizations with

superior performance in the world 229
After the normalization of the maintenance management data, the positive and
negative gaps of maintenance performance in the power plant would be clearly
identified against the leading organizations in the world. The causes of
negative gaps were found by understanding how the other leading
organizations achieved their outstanding results.

Step 6: changing and improving the maintenance performances

The results of benchmarking helped the plant to change its maintenance
management system by trimming off its ineffective maintenance practices and
correcting its deficient performance.

Maintenance management approaches

There are three major maintenance management approaches commonly used in
power plants (Kelly, 1989; Davies, 1990; British Standards Institution, 1993;
Gits, 1994; Niebel, 1996; Pintelon and Gelders, 1992):
(1) failure-driven maintenance (FDM);
(2) time-based maintenance (TBM);
(3) condition-based maintenance (CBM) (see Figure 1).

Failure-driven maintenance
Failure-driven maintenance (FDM), which is also named as run-to-failure
maintenance (Moubray, 1997), is a reactive maintenance approach to run the
equipment until failure. Under FDM, equipment receives no ongoing health
care or only minimal routine maintenance, i.e. lubricating, calibrating and
refurbishing. Corrective maintenance is often dominated by unplanned events,
i.e. functional failure, malfunction, or breakdown of equipment (Niebel, 1996;
Tsang, 1995).

Figure 1.
The three commonly
used maintenance
management
approaches
JQME Time-based maintenance
6,4 Time-based maintenance (TBM), which is also known as periodic preventive
maintenance, assumes that the estimated failure behavior of the equipment, i.e.
the mean time between functional failure (MTBF) has statistically or
experientially been known during equipment and machinery degrading within
normal usage (Gertsbakh, 1977).
230
Condition-based maintenance
Condition-based maintenance (CBM), which is also known as predictive
maintenance, aims at carrying out corrective maintenance works when a unit
or component has reached a pre-determined condition before failure or
breakdown. With the extensive use of CBM, more planned corrective
maintenance works can be performed.
The analysis of the maintenance management practices performed by the 72
power plants and the benchmarked power plant is shown in Table I. Preventive
and predictive maintenance approaches have been widely adopted in the
benchmarked power plant. Based on the costs and the history of the equipment,
the benchmarked plant utilized the reliability centered maintenance (RCM)
approach to work out the content and the mix of its preventive and predictive
maintenance activities. The extensive use of preventive and predictive
maintenance works in the benchmarked power plant might be the major reason
for the non-occurrence of emergency repairs in this plant. However, the 55 per
cent preventive maintenance in the benchmarked plant was very high. It might
include some over-preventive activities. To reduce these excessive preventive
works through more planned corrective maintenance without affecting the
reliability of the system is the key work to be addressed promptly by the
benchmarked plant. With better condition-based fault diagnosis and better
prediction of the deterioration of equipment, more planned corrective
maintenance could be achieved.

Overall equipment maintenance performance

The overall equipment maintenance performance was measured by analyzing
both the productivity and service levels of maintenance activities in the plant.

Measurement of maintenance productivity level

The maintenance productivity level of equipment is measured in terms of the
total maintenance costs of labor, material and tools etc. spent in maintenance

The benchmarked power

Type of maintenance 72 other power plants (%) plant (%)

Table I. Emergency maintenance 7 0

Different maintenance Preventive maintenance 29 55
approaches in power Predictive maintenance 5 22
plants Planned corrective maintenance 59 23
activities divided by the electricity generated in MW. In order to average out the Enhancement of
random variation, five years' total equipment maintenance costs excluding the maintenance
costs for pollution control, technical support, disaster and rehabilitation in the management
plant were used to calculate the average annual equipment maintenance costs:
P
5
…TPMC ÿ TPCC ÿ TTSC ÿ TCDR†
N ˆ1 231
AEMC ˆ …1†
5
where:
AEMC ˆ average equipment maintenance cost for five years
TPMC ˆ total plant maintenance cost per year
TPCC ˆ total pollution control cost per year
TTSC ˆ total technical support cost per year
TCDR ˆ total cost for disaster and rehabilitation per year
N ˆ number of years …N ˆ 1; 2; 3; 4 and 5†

The total equipment maintenance costs in one of the electricity generating units
in the benchmarked power plant is illustrated in Table II.
The average equipment maintenance cost for this unit is:
P
5
…TPMC ÿ TPCC ÿ TTSC ÿ TCDR†
N ˆ1
AEMC ˆ
5
3614 ‡ 2808 ‡ 3421 ‡ 2698 ‡ 6488
ˆ ˆ 3; 806…K†
5
The maintenance productivity, which is measured by AEMC per MW, is:
AEMC 3806K
Xˆ ˆ ˆ 5:8K
660 660

Total
Total Total equipment
Total plant pollution technical Total disaster and maintenance
maintenance cost control cost support cost rehabilitation cost costs
Year (US$ 1,000) (US$ 1,000) (US$ 1,000) (US$ 1,000) (US$ 1,000)

1 3,921 143 164 0 3,614 Table II.

2 3,131 154 169 0 2,808 Maintenance costs for
3 3,775 156 198 0 3,421 generating unit B1 at
4 3,146 158 290 0 2,698 the benchmarked
5 7,331 129 714 0 6,488 power plant
JQME The plants participating in the benchmarking exercise were segmented and
6,4 grouped according to fuel type, design and size of the generating units. The
average equipment cost was normalized to compensate the differences in
regional wage discrepancies, inflation effects, unit design and unit operating
variables. Based on the normalized and adjusted benchmarking information in
Table III, the five years' average equipment maintenance costs for all the
232 generating units in the benchmarked power plant were compared with the 72
other power plants. The results of the comparison show that the average
equipment maintenance costs per MW in the benchmarked power plant were
much lower than the median costs for the other plants, i.e. US$ 13,000-18,000
and US$ 5.8,000-9,000 for the 350 MW and 660 MW units respectively.
However, there were still significant gaps between the benchmarked power
plant and the best performer. The overall maintenance productivity level of the
benchmarked power plant needs further enhancements before it can become
the world leader in the field. The activity-based costing (ABC) system has been
introduced on the key issues in the plant to control cost and to eliminate
unnecessary maintenance activities. Maintenance budgetary-control system
based on the bottom-up approach has also been adopted. Standard cost for
individual maintenance activity has been formulated and introduced to staff.
Significant improvement has been envisaged.

Measurement of maintenance service level

Maintenance service level was measured as follows:
P
5
EFOR  SH
N ˆ1
AEFOR ˆ …2†
P
5
SH
N ˆ1

P
5
EA
N ˆ1
AEA ˆ …3†
5

Installed electricity capability

350MW 660MW
Units PACEa Units PACEa
Maintenance cost/MW A1 - A4 Median Best B1 - B4 Median Best

Total equipment maintenance 3K-

costs (US$) 18K 21K 7.8K 5.8K-9K 14.8K 5.8K
Boiler maintenance costs (US$) 0.6K-6.4K 12.7K 2.6K 1.4K-2.6K 8.8K 1.3K
Table III. Turbine ± generator maintenance 0.5K-2.8K 3.9K 0.8K 1.5K 2.8K 0.6K
Comparison of Costs (US$)
equipment maintenance
a
costs Note: PACE: world class performance and competitive excellence
 P
5 Enhancement of
FOMR
maintenance
AFOMR ˆ N ˆ1 …4† management
5
where:
AEFOR ˆ Average equivalent forced outage rate for five years 233
AEA ˆ Average equivalent availability for five years
AFOMR ˆ Average forced outage maintenance rate for five years
NFOM ˆ Number of forced outage maintenance in a year
EFOR ˆ Equivalent forced outage rate
SH ˆ Service hour
EA ˆ Equivalent availability
FOMR ˆ Forced outage maintenance rate
N ˆ Number of years …from one to five†

Table IV shows the equivalent forced outage rate (EFOR), service hours (SH),
equivalent availability (EA), and forced outage maintenance rate (FOMR) for
five years in one of the generating units in the benchmarked power plant:
The AEFOR for this unit is:
P
5
EFOR  SH
N ˆ1
AEFOR ˆ
P
5
SH
N ˆ1

3:9%  6540 ‡ 5:5%  6828 ‡ 3:6%  7505 ‡ 5:1%  6887 ‡ 2:6%  6930
ˆ
6540 ‡ 6828 ‡ 7505 ‡ 6887 ‡ 6930

ˆ 4:1%

Forced outage
Equivalent forced Equivalent maintenance rate
Year outage rate (%) Service hours availability (%) (%)

1 3.9 6,540 85.5 0

2 5.5 6,828 92 0
3 3.6 7,505 88.6 0.1 Table IV.
4 5.1 6,887 94.8 0.1 Maintenance
5 2.6 6,930 72.6 0 service data
JQME The five years average equivalent availability (AEA) for this unit is:
6,4 P
5
EA
N ˆ1 85:5% ‡ 92% ‡ 88:6% ‡ 94:8% ‡ 72:6%
AEA ˆ ˆ ˆ 86:7%
5 5

234 The five years average forced outage maintenance rate (AFOMR) for this unit
is:
P
5
FOMR
0 ‡ 0 ‡ 0:1% ‡ 0:1% ‡ 0
AFOMR ˆ N ˆ1 ˆ ˆ 0:04%
5 5
Table V shows the AEFOR, EA, FOMR and the number of maintenance forced
outages for this unit in the benchmarked power plant. Table V also shows a
rating scale from 0 to 2 (where 2 is the best, 0 is the worst) and a weighting
factor against each measured area according to the characteristics of power
plants.
According to Table V, the weighted maintenance service level (Y) the
concerned unit at the benchmarked power plant is:
Y ˆ 1:92  35% ‡ 1:73  35% ‡ 1:99  20% ‡ 2  10% ˆ 1:88

Based on the normalized and adjusted benchmarking information database,

Table VI shows the comparison of the weighted maintenance service levels in
the benchmarked power plant versus the other 72 power plants.
The overall maintenance performance, in terms of productivity and services
levels, of the benchmarked power plant is shown in Figure 2. The best
performers are located on the top right-hand corner sector indicating the lowest
equipment maintenance cost per MW on productivity level and the highest
maintenance service level. The concerned unit of the benchmarked power plant
falls into this sector showing that the overall maintenance performance of the
benchmarked power plant is rather satisfactorily comparable with the best
performers in the world.

Result of
Driver calculation (%) Rating( 0-2)a Weight (%)

AEFORb 4.1 1.92 35

AEAc 86.7 1.73 35
AFOMRd 0.04 1.99 20
Number of forced outage 0 2 10
maintenance in 1995
Table V.
Weighted maintenance Notes: a where, 2 is the best, 0 is the worst; b AEFOR = five years average equivalent
service level for forced outage rate; c AEA = five years average equivalent availability; d AFOMR = five
generating unit B1 years average of forced outage maintenance rate
 Installed electricity capability Enhancement of
350 MW More than 660 MW maintenance
Units PACEa Units PACE
Maintenance service data A1-A4 Median Best B1-B4 Median Best
management

AEFORb (%) 0.5-2.5 7 0.5 0.5-4.1 5 0.5

AEAc (%) 90-93 85 90 87-92 85 87
AFOMRd (%) 0.02 1 0 0.04 1.8 0
235
Number of forced maintenance
outage in 1995 0 1 0 0.5 1 0
Table VI.
a b
Notes: PACE: world class performance and competitive excellence; AEFOR = five Comparison of
years average equivalent forced outage rate; c AEA = five years average of equivalent maintenance service
availability; d AFOMR = five years average of forced outage maintenance rate levels

Figure 2.
Overall maintenance
performance of a
generating unit in the
benchmarked power
plant

Maintenance organization management and structure

The organization structures of the benchmarked and the 72 other power plants
were analyzed and compared. The average span of control, i.e. the number of
subordinates that an individual maintenance supervisor supervises, was eight.
The highest span was 28 and the average number of layers in the maintenance
departments was four. In the benchmarked power plant, the traditional
hierarchical structure had been replaced by a flattened structure of only four
layers in the maintenance department. The four layers include the first tier
manager, the second tier head of maintenance department, the third tier team
leaders and the fourth tier team members. The span of control in the
maintenance department of the benchmarked power plant was seven, which
was very close to the average span of the other 72 power plants.
JQME Human resources management
6,4 FTE was defined as one full time equivalent worker working for one year, so
ten workers working for six months was equivalent to five FTEs
correspondingly. Results of the benchmarking exercise show that the FTEs per
100MW in different power plants varied widely from one to another. The
average FTEs/100 MW for the coal-fired power plants with three or more
236 generating units on site was 36 and the lowest was 14. The benchmarked
power plant has been facing continuous pressures to reduce O&M costs. There
was a downsizing exercise to reduce the total number of employees in the plant
from 1,150 to 733 in 1996 through three ``voluntary departure schemes''. At the
same time the total number of employees in the maintenance branch was
reduced from 600 in 1993 to 273 in 1996. In 1997 the actual FTEs/100MW of the
benchmarked power plant was down to 16, which was very low comparing
with the other 72 power plants. A relatively small station-based permanent
maintenance workforce, working in a flattened and lean organization to
facilitate a high degree of labor flexibility and responsibility, is kept on-site to
support the non-outage maintenance work in the benchmarked power plant.
With the development of the teamwork and multi-skill practices, the traditional
specialized disciplines, such as electrical and mechanical engineering, are
merged. Most of the maintenance tasks are handled directly by operators
instead of the on-site maintenance team. This flexible, co-operative and shared
responsibility approach among production and maintenance personnel could
on one hand promote operator ownership and on the other hand free up
maintenance personnel to perform more technically challenging maintenance
works.

Work orders planning and control

The work order system is a commonly used method in power plants to control
and monitor equipment maintenance activities. It includes work order
generation, assessment, cost estimation, approval, scheduling, execution, and
reporting. Work order system is often used to record maintenance history and
to control maintenance costs. It is a useful tool to optimize the utilization of
direct or indirect resources in maintenance, i.e. manpower, money, equipment,
materials, tools, facilities and information. It also provides prompt and precise
communications among participants in a maintenance job. According to the
benchmarking result, about 90 per cent of the 72 power plants used
computerized work order system in handling their maintenance jobs. On
average, about 90 per cent of the maintenance works were covered by work
order system in the 72 plants. Even though the benchmarked plant performed
much better that the average power plant, Table VII shows that in comparing
with the best performer, many aspects of the work order system in the
benchmarked power plant require further improvement. The areas for
improvement include the approval steps of work order, the number of hand-off
 The Enhancement of
benchmarked PACEa PACEa best maintenance
Work order system power plant median performer
management
Approval steps of work order 3 2 1
Number of hand off 4 4 1-2
Cycle time of minor corrective job (hours) 8 6 1.5
Cycle time of major corrective job (hours) 80 75 30
237
Number of preventive maintenance work orders
per year 26,315 1,500 < 1,000
Table VII.
a
Note: PACE: world class performance and competitive excellence Work order system

(the number of transfer of responsibility from one to another), the cycle times of
the minor/major corrective jobs and the frequency of preventive maintenance
tasks.

Outage planning and control

Table VIII shows the average planned outage days per year and the average
interval between planned overhauls for the benchmarked power plant. Once
again, the benchmarked plant was much better than the average plant.
However, there was still a big gap from the best performer in the world. Many
remedial actions such as the use of the condition-based fault diagnosis
techniques have been used in different areas to improve the situation. The
outcome is yet to be assessed.

Conclusions
One of the critical success factors in benchmarking is to avoid direct transfer of
the best practices from the best performers without refining to meet individual
company's requirements. In many cases, blindly resembling the best practices
may even lead to the suppressing of creativity by being confined too much to
the practices of the others. In general, the average or below average companies
would have benefited more from benchmarking, as the gaps for improvement
are wide. However, the benchmarked power plant reported on in this paper is
certainly not an average performer. In many aspects, i.e. maintenance
productivity and services levels, it has already performed in the region of the
best performers. By narrowing down or eliminating the gap lagging behind the

The
benchmarked PACEa PACEa
Outage planning and control power plant median best

Average interval between planned overhauls (month) 12 24 8

The planned outage day 45 20 0 Table VIII.
Outage planning and
a
Note: PACE: world class performance and competitive excellence control
JQME best performers can only provide incremental improvements for this plant. The
6,4 pace of this gradual improvement is certainly not good enough for a plant
aiming at becoming the world leader in the field. In order to utilize the
benchmarking results more effectively, the plant should look for major
breakthroughs in maintenance management.
As shown in the benchmarking results, the benchmarked power plant has
238 been relying too heavily on the conventional preventive maintenance approach.
This over reliance of preventive maintenance has to a certain extent reduced
the unplanned corrective maintenance in the plant, however, it has also
incurred very excessive maintenance costs and efforts. The focus on predictive
maintenance through predictive decision support systems (IDSS) for condition
monitoring has been reported effective for achieving significant improvement
in maintenance for plants with complex and automated equipment (Luxhnj,
1998; Zhu, 1996). The research work for developing an intelligent and
predictive decision support system (IPDSS) for CBM is in progress at City
University of Hong Kong. Both the IDSS and the IPDSS will help the pre-
determination of when, where, what, how and who to maintain equipment
systems. The successful implementation of the predictive maintenance plan
could help plants to avoid the accumulation of equipment problems causing
subsequent fatal breakdowns or accidents. Increasing the percentage of
predictive planned maintenance action can also help to reduce the quantity and
value of spare parts required for emergency repairs.
The successful implementation of the integrated maintenance management
system developed from IDSS or IPDSS, will have a significant impact on the
individual behavior, management, organizational structure, and organizational
culture of the company. The new system can help to reduce the content and
frequencies of maintenance works and activities. Only a relatively small
station-based permanent maintenance workforce would be kept on-site to
support the non-outage maintenance work. The special, complex or peak-time
maintenance tasks would be handled mainly by outside contractors rather than
the company-based maintenance labours. The small-sized on-site maintenance
workforce could work in a flattened and lean organization structure to facilitate
a high degree of labor flexibility and responsibility. Alongside the teamwork
and multi-skill practices, the traditional separated disciplines in the plant, such
as electrical and mechanical engineering, could be merged. Most of the minor
maintenance tasks could be handled directly by operators instead of the on-site
maintenance team. The flexible, co-operative and shared responsibility
approaches among production and maintenance personnel could on one hand
promote operator ownership and on the other hand free up maintenance
personnel to perform more technically challenging maintenance works to
improve production quality.
In addition to adopting the best practices from the best performers,
benchmarking can also help plants to identify critical maintenance issues. The
proper use of the IPDSS condition-based maintenance for the identified critical
areas would, in general, help plants to achieve breakthrough improvement in
maintenance. The investigation and development of IDSS and IPDSS for Enhancement of
condition-based maintenance would properly attract more and more attention maintenance
from practitioners and researchers in maintenance in the coming years. management
References and further reading
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British Standards Institution (1993), BS3811:1993, British Standard Glossary of Maintenance
Management Terms in Terotechnology, BSI, Hemel Hempstead.
Chen, F. (1994), ``Benchmarking: preventive maintenance practices at Japanese transplants'',
International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, Vol. 11 No. 8, pp. 19-26.
Collacott, R.A. (1977), Mechanical Fault Diagnosis and Condition Monitoring, Chapman and Hall,
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