Background/Problems
When breakdowns occur on critical lines it’s all hands on deck, but what happens when there is too much going on? When the engineers are all busy? It can all be very chaotic at times and “Who shouts loudest?” is not the best way to manage maintenance resources.
Less serious problems are another challenge, ensuring they get recorded and responded to without being missed or forgotten. All of this is made more difficult by the fact that the engineers are out on the plant, not always easy to locate, even with pagers.
The challenge is to get all repair requests, whether critical or not, marshalled through a common system that allows people to review all of the requests, prioritise the work and manage resources effectively. Equally important is the communication back to production about the nature of the fault, the likely repair times so they can respond too.
Solution
The Repair module of Shopfloor-OnlineTM Lifescience Edition provides a solution that lets you:
- Record a breakdown and request a repair
- For less urgent matters, request repairs that can be carried out the next time work is being carried out on that asset
- View all repair requests, create works orders, assign to engineers or teams, authorise and track
- Support engineers to follow work instructions and record steps carried out
- Record spare parts used and man-hours to make the repair
- Track time to respond and time to repair
When Used with Other Modules
When the Repairs module is used in conjunction with other modules of Shopfloor-OnlineTM Lifescience Edition more opportunities open up. For example:
- With the Downtime module – when downtime events are classed as breakdowns, it automatically trigger repair requests
- With the Links to Documents module – links in all documentation related to each asset for easy access. Alternatively take photographs at various stages of maintenance activities to aid future work.
- With the Inventory module – manage all the spare part inventory
Benefits
- Improve response time – speed up the communication between production and maintenance
- Improve effectiveness – by viewing all that needs to be done and prioritising work
- Improve visibility – so everyone can see what is happening
- Accountability – track response times and repair times
- Improve effectiveness – ensure non-critical jobs are never missed – they are prompted when other related work is planned.
