Page 29 - Machinery Component Maintenance

14 Machinery Component Maintenance and Repair

proach to all aspects of monitoring plant performance and providing spe-
cific maintenance and engineering services as required, was evolved as
the fundamental organizational concept. Once this basic concept was
reached, efforts were then devoted to understanding and establishing spe-
cific methods of accomplishing plant maintenance and engineering ser-
vices under the general system concept.
Since the plant managers’ responsibilities on a decentralized basis rep-
resented a rather conventional approach to day-today operation, we will
dwell on considerations relative to the centralized aspect of plant mainte-
nance and engineering services and the monitoring function. These cen-
tralized services were provided by a group of specialists located for the
most part at the home office or at the location of the largest affiliated
plant. Some advantages of this centralized approach to plant maintenance
and engineering services are:

1. Better solutions to important technical problems. With the varied
plant problems, the ability to use key specialists will normally re-
sult in the best technical solution.
2. More efficient use of talent. With extremely high onstream factors,
chemical and mechanical engineering specialists at each facility
cannot be fully justified, since the rate of problems and/or severity
would not normally warrant their continuous presence. Minimum
staffing at each plant to handle normal day-today problems, plus a
mobile technical and maintenance organization will result in lower
overall costs. The question of overstaffing at a particular facility to
take care of “first year” startup problems is a very real one. The
ability to have this same mobile specialist group help in quickly
solving first year operation problems allows a flexible and easy
method of reducing a facility to its minimum labor cost at the ear-
liest time.
3. Better communication. Technical solutions, procedures, and other
important factors which have a direct and immediate effect on on-
stream factors and costs can be more readily transmitted from one
plant to another. The use of plant shutdown and maintenance re-
ports prepared by the plant manager allows the central technical or-
ganization to evaluate and disseminate information pertinent to
other facilities.
4. Better response to management and business outlook. Constantly
varying market conditions change product demand and value.
These important factors often become the overriding consideration
in scheduling maintenance work and turnarounds. Centralized
overall maintenance planning can more readily assimilate these fac-
tors in considering a large number of plants at different locations.