Period-end Pile Ups

Most commonly, the maintenance schedules list the machines to be overhauled month by month or fortnight by fortnight or week by week except in breakdown maintenance where the planning will be day by day. If the required spare parts are not available in time these will be piled up at the end of the period, and could not be completed in time. Even it may occur with the breakdown maintenance also.

This may affect the availability of the machines adversely. The production manager will obviously puts blame on the Maintenance manager and the Maintenance manager would find the way to escape by throwing the blame on Materials manager or Planning Manager for the want of spares. But what is outcome by such boomerangs? Sometimes this pile up may result out of the non-availability in the local market or due to poor planning of maintenance manager. Apart from these technical and managerial problems, the pile up may be resulted in PM schedules because of the leisure attitude in the beginning of the period due to less pressure and rushing up at the end of the period due to more pressure to finish in the targeted date. Perhaps, this brings down the quality of the work and affects the reliability of the maintenance.

If you don't like period-end pile-ups, what can you do? The simplest thing is to schedule for shorter periods. A periodic review and regular follow up may also help in reducing the pile up. The skill, the dedication, the team spirit, co ordination and the motivation will be some other significant factors controlling the pile up.

Merits

• It necessitates the periodic review to control the period-end pile up.
• It builds up team spirit and co-ordination while controlling the pile-up.
• Workmen will have full work and 'No-Work' days can be avoided.
• As there is less idle time, the conflicts will come down and behavioural problems can be avoided.

Demerits

• Leisure attitude in beginning of the period creates pressure to complete in targeted date during the end of the period. This may pile up the work or bring down the quality.
• The pressure and rush up work would affect the reliability, availability and maintainability of the machines adversely.
• Pressure on workmen develops certain human relation problems.
• Pressure on workmen creates an unsafe work environment and even unsafe to health of the individuals also.