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Role of Lean Principles and 5S Programs in Increasing Maintenance Productivity

Conference Paper · February 2022

DOI: 10.2523/IPTC-22107-MS

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IPTC-22107-MS

Role of Lean Principles and 5S Programs in Increasing Maintenance

Productivity

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Abdullah Al-Hussain and Hussain Al-Ahmed, TAQA

Copyright 2022, International Petroleum Technology Conference DOI 10.2523/IPTC-22107-MS

This paper was prepared for presentation at the International Petroleum Technology Conference held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 21-23 February 2022.

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Abstract
Lean is a methodology that concentrates on monitoring a process or a system, analyzing it, minimizing
waste within the system, and increasing productivity simultaneously. On the other hand, 5S, which is an
abbreviation for Sort, Set-In-Order, Shine, Standardize, Sustain, is a principle utilized to eliminate Process
wastes which may include: wasted time, wasted space, and wasted inventory. The scope of this paper is to
showcase the importance of employees’ contribution in continuous improvement initiatives and culture of
capitalizing on the benefit of lessons learnt and knowledge sharing.
The program began with educating maintenance team about Lean Principles, 5S Programs, DMAIC
(Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control) methodology and their importance. Then, sessions of
brainstorming and data collection were conducted. In addition, employees were encouraged to use A3 papers
to draft a comparison between current state and future state of any process, step, or a procedure which
they think can be performed in a better, faster, safer, and more efficient manner. Next, a weekly continuous
improvement meeting was held by quality committee which consisted of members from maintenance,
quality & reliability, and management teams to review each improvement idea and take a proper action.
The positive impact of Lean, 5S and DMAIC have been proved working and helped drilling business
unit to exploit cost saving opportunities, maintain a perfect record of service quality with client, and
improve maintenance productivity. This includes 100% client satisfaction and operating efficiency, 50%
reduction in equipment turnaround time, over 100% increase in number of equipment maintained per month
and decrease in overtime man-hours by 90%. These results were achieved after close monitoring and
controlling of the overall process conducted for over 52 weeks (From Q3 2020 to Q3 2021) and more than 60
improvement ideas implemented. Improvement ideas were received, reviewed, analyzed, further enhanced,
and immediately implemented to ensure the end results are obtained. The improvement ideas and lessons
learnt register was built to document, give credit, and protect intellectual property of the idea owner and
recognize top contributors to the register.
This success story of performance elevation, cost reduction, process optimization and best practices
implementation can be cascaded to other departments and companies delivering products and services to
the petroleum industry.
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Introduction
In this modern world, corporates and professional organizations thrive to outperform competition and win
maximum possible market share. This is only achievable by continuously exceeding customer satisfaction
and maintaining a competitive advantage whether it is more affordable prices or premium customer service.
As a result, internal procedures and systems are periodically reviewed and reconfigured to fulfil those new
sophisticated constraints. Quality management and continuous improvement are the systematical framework
to progressively improving processes and systems with their wide spectrum of methodologies, principles,

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tools, techniques, and practices to cope with the complexity of nowadays challenges.
When established, drilling services department had struggled with managing quality rather than
improving it due to the lack of specialized and trained personnel in the field of quality. However, as the team
grew, management has quickly identified the need for quality specialists to focus on the quality management
system and ensure compliance with internal and external audits and international standards. In addition,
quality role expands to support operations and maintenance functions by collecting and performing data
analytical techniques and share recommendations and suggestions with concerned function head.
Maintenance function is a key player in any oilfield services organization and without a solid system in
place to plan, execute, monitor and control of maintenance activities, the consequences can be catastrophic
and inevitable on the whole organization.

Theory and Definition

Lean methodology can be traced back to 1930 when one of the most famous Japanese car manufacturers
launched their own production model aimed originally at minimizing times within the production system
and called it Just-In-Time production or lean production. The idea of Lean has evolved with time and became
more process-oriented targeting eight specific wastes, which are: Defects, Overproduction, Waiting, Unused
Potential, Transport, Inventory, Motion, and Extra processing, explained in more details as follows:
1. Defects can cause tremendous loss of efforts in the rework of design, manufacturing, and QA/QC of
products and money loss by scrapping of all defective inventory.
2. Overproduction that is more than required is also considered waste as excess products may have
default life and not being utilized for long time could result in degradation of the product quality over
time. In addition, products are subject to periodical upgrades, and in the case of large stagnant stock,
such upgrades would be costly.
3. Waiting in most of the production/operation applications is a major time killer for excellent operational
efficiency and productivity. Therefore, process steps in a system should always be targeting minimum
lag time between steps to eliminate wasted time.
4. Unused Potential is defined as the improper identification, classification and utilization of employees’
skills, talents, knowledge, and experience to the fullest.
5. Transport is the unnecessary movements of products and materials during the production, operation,
and storage phases.
6. Excess inventory of products and materials that are not being processed or consumed in a timely
manner is considered waste of organization storage and handling resources.
7. Motion is described as the unnecessary movements of employees while performing their work tasks.
8. Extra processing is any activity that is performed during the production that does not add value to
the final delivered product.
Another quality core principle is the DMAIC which is an abbreviation for Define, Measure, Analyze,
Improve, and Control. DMAIC is a methodology of continuous improvement used for enhancing,
optimizing, and stabilizing business systems and processes. The definitions of each step of DMAIC are the
following:
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– Define: The first step is to define the problem, identify the customer, list the customer requirements,
and assess critical process outputs.
– Measure: The second step is to collect data and specifications of the existing problem to enable quality
specialists to determine performance metrics and baselines.
– Analyze: The third step is to plot and interpret collected data, carry out root cause analysis such as
fishbone, validate root causes, isolate, and prioritize those causes.
– Improve: The fourth step is to propose solutions and agree on an action plan to implement these

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solutions while performing two important tests, Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) and Failure Mode and
Effect Analysis (FMEA) and then deploy improvements.
– Control: The last step is to embed the improvements and maintain sustainability. One technique can
be used here to monitor process disturbance is the control chart.
On the other hand, 5S which stands for Sort, set in order, Shine, Standardize, Sustain, is a methodology
that ensures the workplace is safe, clean, and well organized to reduce waste and maximize productivity. It
is suited to provide a workplace of high quality for better physical and mental status of employees.

Application of Processes
Problem Definition (Define)
Since the acquisition and merger of the drilling services product line with the organization, there were
misalignments and gaps which resulted in low productivity, poor service quality and frequent customer
complaints due to delays in product delivery or product defects. Consequently, critical process inputs and
outputs were identified as Standard Time, Capacity Planning, Maintenance Scheduling, and competency
development. Below are the definitions of each category:
Job Standard Time of an activity is the time needed for a qualified worker to perform the activity or
task at a pace of 100%. This is determined by time study, work sampling or expert estimation.
Job Standard Time=Basic Time (1+Allowance)
Where Basic Time=Observed Time (Rating/(Standard Rating)), and
Allowance is determined based on experience
Capacity planning is a medium to long term planning for maintenance which involves the forecasting
of maintenance resources required to perform the maintenance load and achieve organizational
objectives.
Maintenance Scheduling is the process by which the jobs are matched with resources and sequenced at
certain points in time.
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Figure 1—Screenshot of an Actual Maintenance Scheduling Platform

Competency Development is the practice of performing need analysis, determining desired performance,
and conducting training to fill the gap between current performance and desired performance.

Figure 2—Picture of a Skills Competency Matrix

Performance Metrics and KPI Setting (Measure)

Maintenance KPIs can be divided into two categories: leading and lagging indicators. A leading indicator,
such as Preventive Maintenance Percentage (PMP) and Preventative Maintenance Compliance (PMC).
While Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) and Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) are examples of
Maintenance lagging indicators. Leading and lagging indicators are used in CMMS (Computerized
Maintenance Management Systems) KPI tracking. In this case study, the following metrics were developed
which are, total regular man-hours, total overtime man-hours, total, number of closed work orders (Ready
Tools), and total number of hours spent on one tool (Throughput).
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Figure 3—Maintenance Metrics measured on weekly basis

Data Analysis and Results (Analyze)

After closely observing the maintenance workflow and monitoring performance metrics set at the measure
stage of this DMAIC process, the following findings were identified:
No proper utilization of manpower was done due to a single shift work schedule.
Overtime hours was totally uncontrolled and, in some instances, exceeded the normal daily working
hours which led to employee's fatigue and poor work/life balance.
Several operation complaints were received due to delays in equipment maintenance and mobilization
to client's rigsite.
Equipment frequently received minimal maintenance service level which led to undiscovered issues
in the equipment and failures during operations.
Uncontrolled cost of third-party inspection company was faced due to emergency callouts and over-
night expenses.
Machining and repair work of damaged components was not planned properly which caused more
tools to be in down-for-parts status for long time.
On many occasions, CMMS did not reflect the real situation in terms of asset location and asset status
which caused more disturbance to operation tool capacity planning.
On average, each equipment took around 20 man-hours to be fully maintained while the actual
standard time calculations proved that it can be reduced to approximately 11 man-hours.
Standard Time calculation was carried out using Time Study approach:
Observed Time=Disassembly+Inspection+Assembly+Testing

Ratings were determined based on experience level of technicians as follows:

Mech. Technician Level Rating

Mech. Technician Trainee 130

Mech. Technician 1 115

Mech. Technician 2 100

Mech. Technician 2 95

For Maintenance technician 1,Rating of 115 is used.

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Allowance of 10% is used

Standard Time = Basic Time (1 + Allowance) = 9.8(1 + 0.1) = 10.78 hours
The below graph depicts the overall maintenance productivity over the first four months with no
improvements implemented. As illustrated, productivity was unstable with large standard deviation and on
average, man-hours were about 252 hours/week while only five technicians are working with a schedule

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of 40 hrs/week which ideally should sum up to 200 hours/week. All remaining 52 hours were claimed as
overtime whether after official working hours or on the weekends.

Figure 4—Maintenance Productivity in the first four months

All the above findings contributed in one way or another in the unacceptable performance. Therefore,
root cause analysis meetings were conducted to identify root causes, determine the impact of each root
cause, and prioritize root causes.
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Figure 5—Schematic of Fishbone Root Cause Analysis

The root causes were identified and prioritized as follows:

– Man-Power utilization was the primary root cause of poor maintenance performance.
– Workflow was the secondary root cause, and the main obstacle of a smooth maintenance was a
bottleneck in the inspection step where tools were sent and kept for days waiting to be inspected,
another workflow waste was attributed to waiting time for overhead cranes and forklifts.
– Competency was identified as a third cause and a limiting reactant to faster maintenance performance.

Continuous Improvement Initiative Implementation (Improve)

Importance of employee training. Training and competency development is a key success factor for
corporates and organizations. It enables employers to pinpoint competencies and skills they need employees
to acquire. In this case study, the quality principles, methodologies, tools, and techniques were of high
importance to raise quality awareness and increase work efficiency along with the technical and on-job
training. Therefore, a series of training sessions on quality took place for all maintenance organization.
Quality principles such as Lean, 5S, Ishikawa (Fishbone), Poka Yoke (Error-Proofing), Kaizen, and
continuous improvement (DMAIC) were taught to technicians with exercises to learn how these principles
are applied.
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Figure 6—Pictures of conducted quality training sessions

Driving the change. Since drilling services department was recently established and most of its employees
were experienced professionals from the oil and gas industry, it was identified that their experience and
knowledge should be unleashed, their high potential should be discovered, and their expertise should be
utilized. All employees were empowered to drive the change in the workplace and encouraged to submit
improvement ideas to any process, step, procedure, workflow, or workplace setup which they think can
be performed in a better, faster, safer, and more efficiently. At the beginning, employees were reluctant
and hesitant to share their thoughts and speak their minds regarding existing systems and processes as
they are afraid of being misunderstood or misinterpreted as complaining and whining a lot. However, after
management started to contribute to continuous improvement initiative and began criticizing their own
processes and procedures, employees felt more confident and started sharing their thoughts. A3 papers were
used initially to submit improvement ideas. However, after a while, a dedicated template was created to
prepare more thoughtful and presentable ideas.

Figure 7—Examples of hand-drawn improvement ideas

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Figure 8—Examples of template-based improvement ideas

Below is an improvement idea based on removing the "motion" waste from the process where employees
perform unnecessary movements while conducting their routine tasks. This includes design and fabrication
of maintenance service tables and grease and dope trollies for easier equipment servicing and preparation.

Figure 9—Workstations after reducing motion waste

Next is an improvement idea based on 5S concept where every hand tool should have its allocated slot
for better storage and easier identification in the case of a missing hand tool.
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Figure 10—Before and after applying 5S principle of tools storage

As mentioned earlier, inadequate manpower utilization was found as the primary root cause of poor
maintenance productivity. Therefore, a huge attention was paid to resolve this issue including management
meetings, job risk assessment, what-if analysis, and other activities to try to come up with the best plan
to decompose the problem and overcome it permanently. Finally, a plan to start a new night shift was
established, discussed with main concerned parties who are the maintenance team and inspection team,
reviewed, modified, and approved.
The below table demonstrate the first shift schedule implemented ever at drilling services department.
The main idea of this schedule was to ensure daily coverage of operation requests including weekends and
three nights during the weekdays. The benefits of this schedule were witnessed at the very early stages of the
implementation such as the ability of each member of the maintenance team to enjoy his days off without
the possibility of being called to report to workshop and address operation requests. Another achievement
was to cover much more operation requests and be ahead of the plan to avoid any panic when emergency
callouts are received. Moreover, appreciation letters and outstanding performance appraisals started flowing
into the organization from client representatives due to the ability to deliver products despite the very short
notice at any given time.
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Figure 11—Recently Introduced Monthly Shift Schedule

After starting the night shift, a few miscommunication issues have raised due to lack of proper handover
practices where the coming team may miss some of the verbal instructions and highlights from the leaving
team and mistakes or rework happen. Therefore, a shift handover form was prepared to capture as much
as possible of the ongoing activity during the shift and ensure smooth transition from shift to another. In
addition, the shift handover form has helped in increasing the visibility for maintenance supervisors and
manager.

Figure 12—Sample of Shift Handover Form

Another finding of the analysis is the uncontrolled overtime which in certain occasions was avoidable and
unnecessary. This excessive overtime hours were increasing the maintenance cost drastically. Afterwards,
a new control point was introduced to the process which is the overtime pre-approval form which requires
not only the maintenance function head signature but also the head of the drilling services approval which
helped in minimizing the overtime to a huge extent, specifically, by 90%.
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Figure 13—Sample of Overtime Pre-Approval Form

Since this case study took place during COVID-19 pandemic, all fingerprint attendance systems were
disabled to prevent the spread of the virus which in turn introduced a punctuality issue and employees
reporting to work late and sometime never show up. Therefore, attendance had to be taken manually
daily sharp at 7:00 AM for day shift and 3:00 PM for night shift. Initially, objections were received,
and technicians were complaining about the "unnecessary striction", but they adapted to the new system
thereafter.
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Figure 14—Visual attendance sheet posted at the workshop board

Workflow was isolated as the secondary root cause of the unsatisfactory maintenance performance.
That was due to two main issues, waiting for inspection and waiting for overhead crane and forklift. To
tackle those challenges, head of quality had to spend weeks observing, measuring, and monitoring how the
workflow is transitioning between each process step in the maintenance activity such that:

Finally, it was concluded that the inspection is causing major delays in the overall process and had to be
debottlenecked. Data was plotted using value stream mapping principle and showed to management who
decided to launch a new bid for two 3rd party NDT inspection teams instead of one team. After deploying
the two inspection shifts, waiting for inspection became a history. Secondly, waiting for overhead crane and
forklift to move equipment in and out of the workshop was also resolved by renting and deploying a side
loader truck to ease collars movement.

Figure 15—Side loader truck

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Continuous Improvement Meetings. During the fifty-two weeks period, over sixty improvement ideas
were generated and captured covering different aspects of maintenance activities such as workshop setup,
inspection, standard operating procedures, work instructions, workflows, hand tools and power tools
enhancement. Therefore, a need for review, budget approval, and implementation was identified and a call
for a specific meeting was raised to gather management with maintenance, technical and quality teams to
meet on a weekly basis to review rigorously each improvement idea and take a proper action. Actions were
followed up strictly to ensure prompt execution.

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Stabilizing Business Systems and Processes (Control)
After introducing a tremendous number of changes to the maintenance organization in a short period of time,
it became crucial to continue the comprehensive efforts to sustain and maintain growth and development.
Existing standard operating procedures were revised and enhanced, missing procedures were developed,
new visual work instructions were prepared, failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) sessions were
conducted, new technical alerts with new modifications and upgrades were released and regular practical
assessments were performed, all to ensure system stability and sustainability.
In return, the system was proven reasonably stable as illustrated in the performance of the last nine months
considering the seasonality of the data.

Figure 16—Maintenance productivity measured in man-hours/tool

Another substantial achievement is the reduction in overtime man-hours by approximately 90%. This
enormous cost reduction has enabled management to add more members to the workforce and diversify and
enlarge the specializations such as logging while drilling (LWD) and rotary steerable system (RSS).
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Figure 17—Monthly overtime man-hours

Conclusion
To summarize, Lean, 5S, DMAIC and other core quality principles have served various corporations and
organizations optimize their business systems, maximize their profit, and minimize costs while improving
products and services quality and customer experience. This case study as explained is another proof of
the boundless positive leverage of Lean, 5S, and DMAIC which helped drilling services department to
exploit cost saving opportunities, improve maintenance productivity, and exceeds customer expectations.
This includes a perfect record of 100% operating efficiency with zero non-productive time (NPT), 50%
reduction in equipment turnaround time, decrease in overtime man-hours by 90% and 100% increase in
maintenance throughput.

Acknowledgment
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to TAQA senior management who encouraged us, believed
in us, and enabled us to conduct such a thorough and extended research and provided all necessary support
which without this support, the completion of this project would not have been feasible.

References
O., S. and Raouf, A., 2015. Planning and Control of Maintenance Systems. Springer International Publishing.
- TAQA (Industrialization and Energy Services Company) database.

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