Implementing Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) in Mehr Petrochemical Company (MHPC

1. Introduction

• This paper is about implementing CMMS in MHPC when I was working there as maintenance planning and Inspection Head. MHPC is located in north of Iran, Assaluyeh district, Pars Special Economic Energy Zone. It is a High density polyethylene (HDPE) producer. MHPC has the yearly production of 350,000 tons HDPE. I worked in MHPC from August.22.2008 to April.5, 2013.
• This project took 12 months, 3 months from Aug.1.2009 to Oct.31.2009 for preparing the business case, selecting the project Team, defining business requirements and selecting CMMS and 9 months from Nov.1.2009 to Jul.31.2010 for implementing CMMS.

1. Background

• The general nature of this project was about implementing CMMS which is a software tool to help manage and track maintenance activities such as scheduled maintenance, work orders, parts inventory, purchasing and maintenance projects. By using CMMS, problem areas within a plant can be identified and tracked by electronically storing equipment information. This solution ultimately leads to less reactive maintenance and more preventive activities. As CMMS Project Manager I developed a team, consisting of maintenance, operation, procurement and ICT to observe the interests of all related parties. The following organization chart indicates my position in CMMC implementation project.

 

• objective of this project was to implement and integrate a CMMS in MHPC this include choosing the right software that fit MHPC requirement and deploying it in a practical way which all parties in company embrace it and utilize it effectively. The nature of my work as CMMS implementation project manager was to manage work scope and objectives, facilitate communication and technical expertise, set target dates and accountabilities, control commitment and budgets and finally make sure that the investment of MHPC in CMMS has gained its purposes. I used Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK)methodology to ensure that best practices were always employed throughout the CMMS implementation.

 

 

1. Personal workplace activity

• In order to manage the implementation of CMMS effectively I have gone through bellow phases.

1-Initiation

2- Data Gathering and Data Entry

3-System Training & Go-Live

4-Project Close

 

In Initiation phase I had gone through 5 steps

 

1-1-Prepare the Business Case

• I prepared a motivation document for the implementing a CMMS in Aug.2009 This document included the benefits of implementing CMMS in terms of cost savings, efficiency gains, inventory optimization, and return on investment (ROI), health and safety improvements, standardizing work practices. I predicted the required budget, manpower, ICT infrastructures, provided that we buy local software. Because of international sanction on Iran it was difficult to buy international solutions and in case of buying we could not receive proper after sale services.  After confirmation of managing director, Mr.Sakchai and final approval of board of directors my proposal accepted to be implemented and required budget allocated.

 

1-2-Select the Project Team &Determine Roles and Responsibilities

• I selected a team of maintenance, operation, procurement and ICT, this team was core team for implementation of CMMS in first CMMS implementation meeting we finalized responsibilities of each team member and decided to hire a CMMS vendor to supply CMMS and give us advice in each step of implementation. We approved to do all data gathering by ourselves.

1-3- Define Business Requirements, KPIs and Metrics

• Before start the process of purchasing CMMS, I defined the business requirements for MHPC CMMS by holding several meetings with CMMS implementation team and discussing different views. The objective was to make sure that we have a clearly defined goal that directs us to select the right CMMS package for MHPC needs. In this step I provided details about MHPC CMMS Requirements that include:
• Supporting Persian and English languages (menus, dates, calendar, etc).
• Web application.
• Having following subsystems:
  • Work Flow Generator and Management
  • Security Management System
  • Preventive Maintenance
  • Predictive Maintenance
  • Emergency Maintenance
  • Plant Modification work
  • Work Order Tracking
  • Alarm System
  • Reporting and Report Generator
  • Maintenance Document Management
  • trouble shooting
• Ability to define basic data, including Functional Locations Hierarchy, Equipment classes, Cost Centers, Maintenance crew, Possible Failures, Possible Failure Causes and Symptoms, Stop and delay causes.
• Integrated spare part management module. Option to integrate to accounting and purchasing modules in the future. (Vendor should commit possibility to link our CMMS to these Systems.)
• Providing three main categories of reports, focusing on Basic Data, Workflows Data and Costing Data.
• Providing top 10 reports and indices like MTBF, MTTR and OEE.
• Ability to connect to Microsoft Excel and project control software like Microsoft project or primavera planner.
• Supporting mobile device technology and PDA .

 

1-4-CMMS Selection

• I created a matrix of requirements and gave weight to each item regarding its importance to make the process selection faster and more accurate. This score was essentially a measure of how well a CMMS system fit MHPC business requirements. The matrix and scoring system let us quickly and easily compare CMMS solutions side-by-side, and helped us make the right decision. Following picture present main criteria and the weight of each main criterion. In order to make our decision more precise I defined sub criteria for each criterion and gave weight to each one. For instance Company qualification and experience criterion include sub criteria of
• Profile of firm
• Number of past projects
• Similar past successful experience
• Staffing capability
• Stability

 

• In order to evaluate potential vendors I have done the coordination for Implementation team to visit vendors’ company, talk to their clients, and invite them to MHPC to give a presentation of their products and services. Having scored several vendors using evaluation matrix, we reached to three vendors with the required qualifications. In final stage we selected Andishe Pardazan Saramad (APS) with the highest score, APS with 2023 score in comparison with other two companies in our short list with 1256 and 1694 had the highest score, consequently Timar2006 a local software from APS was selected and we moved to the next stage of the implementation process.

1-5-Creating Project Schedule

• In order to decide about project timeline and milestones. I developed following diagram outlining how the implementation is broken down and how the tasks have been performed. It was the end of initiation phase.

 

Phase 2 – Data Gathering and Data Entry

In Data Gathering phase I had gone through 6 steps

 

2-1-Equipment Classification

• Ranking of equipment is essential for setting maintenance activity priority level, spare part storage level, and level of communication to vendor, special maintenance activity such as equipment reliability program (RCM, FMEA), etc. We had classified equipment into 4 classes. I developed a procedure for ranking equipment. In this procedure I considered three criteria of production rate, production quality and safety. Base on this procedure we found that the number of equipment in class 1 was 21 mechanical equipment, 36 electrical equipment and 242 instrumental equipment. Regarding this classification, Timar2006 always give first priority to maintenance work orders on equipment in class 1 in order to guarantee maximum reliability and availability of plant. In addition we used this ranking to provide opportunity shut down list of work orders that should be done in plant shutdown.

 

2-2-Development of equipment and location hierarchies 

• The equipment number is a mandatory field in a CMMS. An  equipment hierarchy  is  the  relationship  of one  item  to  another  item  that  is  either higher or lower in a tree  or chain. List of 863 Mechanical equipment, 3174 piping equipment including all piping items, 324 electrical equipment and 6,865 Instrumental equipment and their locations was gathered by CMMS implementation team for each operation area. I designed following equipment hierarchy consisting of Division, Section, Package, Unit, discipline, equipment and Sub equipment level this structure of hierarchy of equipment finalized in CMMS implementation meetings and Timar2006 configured according to this hierarchy for MHPC. An example of the location and equipment hierarchy for equipment is shown on bellow figure. For example, the equipment numbers for WET AIR FAN is 20-C-403 which is in operation/pelletizer/ pelletizer package/pelletizer mechanical/hot oil unit hierarchy.

 

2-3-Development of Common Data Requirements

• Common data are other information required in the Timar2006 CMMS to allow for a fully operating system. These data include list of equipment specifications, maintenance crew, vendors, manufacturers, equipment group, work order priority codes, work order type codes, equipment classification codes, failure cause codes, remedy codes, failure codes and delay codes. I provided all these data and after discussion and finalizing with other CMMS implementation team. CMMS vendor load these data from Excel sheets into Timar2006 data base.

 

2-4-Development of tools and spare part Inventory System

• I provided the list of all tools in Excel sheets and APS loaded it to timar2006 CMMS database. There was separate software that was utilized by inventory staff for spare part management; APS developed an application for integration of Timar2006 and inventory software and accounting system.

 

2-5-Development of maintenance Workflow

• I formed a team from the APS together with MHPC CMMS Implementation team that worked together to ensure that proper workflow process was implemented in MHPC. After several meetings and discussions we developed Emergency maintenance workflow, Corrective Maintenance workflow and PM (Time Based Maintenance) workflow.

 

 

 

2-6-Development of Preventive Maintenance Schedules

• Since the implementation of CMMS was whilst MHPC just started to operate, there was not much maintenance history. in order to gather basic data to develop PM master plan I used a combination of manufacturer’s requirement and best practice .I have designed Daily PM Tasks Definition Formand PM Tasks Definition Form to gather PM data from operation and maintenance manuals, during the meetings that we had every week to assign different task to CMMS implementation team I distribute these form among team members and asked each maintenance section to check each equipment manual and write the manufacturer recommended PM in these form to enter into CMMS, these form include information  like
• Task description , type and Safety Notice
• MEAN TIME BETWEEN OCCURENCER including frequency, type and value
• Required manpower, material and spare parts and Tools
• Estimated task duration  and equipment down time
• Attachments including work instruction, drawing

For using other companies’ experiences as MHPC is owned by a joint venture of SCG a Thai company, PTT a Japanese company and National Iranian Petrochemical Company (NPCI). I managed to communicate with the maintenance planning head of SCG’s HDPE and receive the PM that they defined in their plant. I combined the PM of vendors’ manuals and PM from SCG and defined 338 PM task for mechanical group, 34 PM task for Electrical and for 34 PM task Instrument for Instrumental section. This was the end of data gathering and data Entry phase

 

 

3-System Training & Go-Live

 

3-1-Training

• Provision of adequate training to staff involved in the day-to-day usage of any CMMS is critical factor to the success of any CMMS implementation. Therefore I Developed a training plan, early in the project, for providing appropriate training to selected users of theTimar2006 CMMS and APS trained staff according to the training plan.

 

3-2-CMMS goes Live

• After completion of development activities as described above, I as super user generated the first set of work orders using the Timar2006 CMMS. The Timar2006 CMMS is set up to automatically issue work orders to maintenance staff as the equipment’s scheduled routine maintenance is to occur. The effort for developing and implementing the CMMS involved 4 developers from APS and a team of 9 persons from MHPC for 12 months.

 

 

 

4-Project Close

 

Post Implementation Assessment and Verification

• Implementation completed when all the project tasks have been signed off. By their nature CMMS tend to evolve over time. I gathered regularly users requested changes in configurations. Some changes were done by me as CMMS administrators and others done by APS. Having conducted a post project review assesses; the success of the CMMS project at MHPC site was assessed. This assessment included a comprehensive assessment report and executive summary of findings that presented to managers.

1. Summary

• The implementation of the CMMS was completed in Jul.2010. The number of corrective maintenance jobs has been reduced as a result of more preventive maintenance activities; In addition, corrective maintenance activities was done more efficiently because of using Timar2006 that enabled maintenance planners to predict, reserve and coordinate all the requirements of each activity beforehand in a more effectively way.
• My role as project manager was a major contributing factor in success of this project, my previous experience as CMMS implementation consultant helped me to provide an applicable plan for implementation of CMMS considering all phases of a software implementation from project initiating to project closing and engaging all related parties with a holistic view.