Maintenance Control- Quality Control- Planning operations

MAINTENANCE CONTROL

Maintenance department has to excercise effective cost control, to carry out the maintenance functions in a pre-specified budget, which is possible only through the following measures:

First line supervisors must be apprised of the cost information of the various materials so that the objective of the management can be met without extra expenditure on maintenance functions

A monthly review of the budget provisions and expenditures actually incurred in respect of each center/shop will provide guidlines to the departmental head to exercise better cost control.

The total expenditure to be incurred can be uniformly spread over the year for better budgetary control. however, the same may not be true in all cases particularly where overhauling of equipment has to be carried out due to unforseen breakdowns. some budgetary provisions must be set aside, to meet out unforeseen exigencies.

The controllable elements of cost such as manpower cost and material cost can be discussed with the concerned personnel, which may help in reducing the total cost of maintenance. Emphasis should be given to reduce the overhead expenditures, as other expenditures cannot be compromised.

It is observed through studies that the manpower cost is normally fixed, but the same way increase due to overtime cost. however, the material cost, which is the prime factor in maintenance cost, can be reduced by timely inspections designed, to detect failures. If the inspection is carried out as per schedule, the total failure of parts may be avoided, which otherwise would increase the maintenance cost. the proper handling of the equipment by the operators also reduces the frequency of repair and material requirements. Operators, who check their equipment regularly and use it within the operating limits, can help avoid many unwanted repairs. In the same way a good record of equipment failures/ maintenance would indicate the nature of failures, which can then be corrected even permanently.

QUALITY CONTROL

Quality control refers to the technical process that gathers, examines, analyze & report the progress of the project & conformance with the performance requirements

The steps involved in quality control process are

Determine what parameter is to be controlled.

Establish its criticality and whether you need to control before, during or after results are produced.

Establish a specification for the parameter to be controlled which provides limits of acceptability and units of measure.

Produce plans for control which specify the means by which the characteristics will be achieved and variation detected and removed.

Organize resources to implement the plans for quality control.

Install a sensor at an appropriate point in the process to sense variance from specification.

Collect and transmit data to a place for analysis.

Verify the results and diagnose the cause of variance.

Propose remedies and decide on the action needed to restore the status quo.

Take the agreed action and check that the variance has been corrected.

Advantages and disadvantages

Advantages include better products and services ultimately establishing a good reputation for a company and higher revenue from having more satisfied customers.

Disadvantages include needing more man power/operations to maintain quality control and adding more time to the initial process.

PLANNING OPERATIONS

An operational planning is a subset of strategic work plan. It describes short-term ways of achieving milestones and explains how, or what portion of, a strategic plan will be put into operation during a given operational period, in the case of commercial application, a fiscal year or another given budgetary term. An operational plan is the basis for, and justification of an annual operating budget request. Therefore, a five-year strategic plan would need five operational plans funded by five operating budgets.

Operational plans should establish the activities and budgets for each part of the organization for the next 1 – 3 years. They link the strategic plan with the activities the organization will deliver and the resources required to deliver them.

An operational plan draws directly from agency and program strategic plans to describe agency and program missions and goals, program objectives, and program activities. Like a strategic plan, an operational plan addresses four questions:

Where are we now?

Where do we want to be?

How do we get there?

How do we measure our progress?

The OP is both the first and the last step in preparing an operating budget request. As the first step, the OP provides a plan for resource allocation; as the last step, the OP may be modified to reflect policy decisions or financial changes made during the budget development process.

Operational plans should be prepared by the people who will be involved in implementation. There is often a need for significant cross-departmental dialogue as plans created by one part of the organization inevitably have implications for other parts.

Operational plans should contain:

clear objectives

activities to be delivered

quality standards

desired outcomes

staffing and resource requirements

implementation timetables

a process for monitoring progress.