Consider the list of daily, weekly, monthly and 12-month reports and KPIs from the first article (see sidebar). To avoid siloed implementation, form a team of different plant representatives with access to corporate resources to satisfy both plant and corporate needs. The data and reports should have common definitions across the company, making comparisons across lines and plants more accurate and quickly comparable. The team also ensures that work order codes have the same meaning, and there is a common definition of assets included at the plant, department, area, line and line-section levels.

Workflows are also most efficiently defined once by a corporate team for all the plants using the same system, eliminating duplicated effort. A reminder that a workflow is the steps in a process for using a specific system and does not specify who performs each step. Who performs each step is defined in the RACI (responsible, accountable, consultant, informed), and the people in RACIs can vary significantly by areas or plants, depending on the training and system familiarity of people. A process is the combination of a common workflow and a RACI that varies by the ability of workers.  

Consider the efficiency of having common workflows for:

• internal rebuilds
• external rebuilds
• contractor work tracking
• how to link follow-up work orders to breakdowns or PM/PdM findings. 

Having common workflows makes training and support across plants simpler and easier.

Also, corporate resources should be used for MRO standard naming for both high value and medium value parts that are common across plants. Standard naming for high value parts makes it easier to find and share parts across plants, and to keep capital spares at only one or a few plants. Standardizing medium value parts facilitates supplier consolidation and makes it easier for plants to eliminate duplicates, adjust min/max levels, and improve asset BOM accuracy and usage planning. Prioritize the higher volume parts first.

MRO standard naming means a common item number and item description across the company, but these need to be additional fields in the system, so that each plant may maintain its legacy item numbers and descriptions. Users may continue to find parts using the legacy fields, while migrating to the standard fields over time. It is also important that the system accommodate not only the manufacturer name and part number but also many supplier names and part numbers. This accommodates multiple suppliers within plants and across plants in different regions.

Mistake: Inadequate change management

All behavior is learned and even improvements to the way we work require sponsorship and reinforcement. People naturally resist change, going from the familiar to the unfamiliar. Too often, companies do not fully invest in training, and the inadequate change management slows organizational adoption of the new system and the achievement of benefits. Remember that for any change, according to Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations theory, there are about 20% early adopters, 60% normal adopters and 20% active resisters.

Proper sponsorship means the general manager or plant manager visibly supports the eAM/CMMS deployment to all stakeholders, setting the expectation that everyone embraces the new system and processes. This public support is made at least twice, once at the launch of the project, so that people cooperate during development, and once near the launch, so that people actively participate in the change. In turn, the project manager must regularly inform the sponsor of project progress and issues in order to sustain trust and support.

Training development begins by identifying how each role will use the new system:  planner, maintenance manager, maintenance supervisor, craft, operator, operations manager and operations supervisor. From this, the training requirements for each role can be defined and a training program developed. People will not remember all their training, so documentation and a quick reference guide should be available to users following training and at the launch. Training sessions should begin with a review of the intended project benefits and how these improve the effectiveness of the organization. People need to know how the system will improve their jobs.

Another important learning tool to provide users is a list of changes, so people see at a high level what about their jobs changes. The combination of ‘what about my job changes’ combined with the ‘how do I do the new process in the system’ provided by training helps people create the mental model needed to develop new habits. For example, if a planner sees that weekly schedule generation and schedule compliance reporting will change, the list of changes becomes a learning checklist and helps the planner prioritize the new processes to be learned.

Reinforcement and help chain are the last major elements in change management. Since most work order data comes from craft people, the most important reinforcement is maintenance supervisors using daily reports to review input data and work order narratives with each craft person until complete and accurate habits are formed.  

Maintenance supervisors and planners should be the first and second level help chains for maintenance and operating people on the shop floor. To facilitate this, whenever practical, maintenance supervisors should start to use the system some time before craft people are expected to use the system. It is a bad idea to require craft people to use the system in ways that supervisors are not also trained. In this case, supervisors aren’t part of the help chain and craft people may feel ‘punished’ for having to do something their bosses don’t have to do. Ideally, it is best to deploy new functionality down one level at a time to create a natural help chain.

Sometimes, eAM/CMMS systems are deployed in phases when some functionality will not be ready in time for the first launch date. In this case, remember that each deployment phase needs to have its own change management plan and activities.

Design the system around the work

Standardization and change management solve different parts of the same deployment problem. Common workflows, definitions and naming conventions give an organization a consistent foundation, while sponsorship, role-based training and a clear help chain give employees a practical way to adopt it.
And neither is a one-time activity. Without corporate standardization and continued plant leadership, a deployment can gradually become different versions of the same system.

There is one more place where deployment teams can create unnecessary friction: the system design itself. The final two common eAM/CMMS deployment mistakes in the last article in this series involve asset hierarchy and data entry choices. A few small configuration decisions can determine how easily people use the system every day.