August 1, 2010

Work Process Optimization: Meeting the Challenge of Change

By Joe VonDerHaar, Daryl Ashcraft, and David Elkins, East Kentucky Power Cooperative’s Spurlock Station and Tyler Gehrmann and Arne Skaalure, Re

Organizational Participation

Corporate-initiated business processes, revised company policies, and station-initiated efforts contribute to WPO’s challenge of change. Implementing the following ongoing initiatives involves the participation of several employees:

• Revisions to the budgeting process, performance review process, and compensation policies.
• Selection of new business management software to replace the existing Maximo system.
• A new energy control program (the updated hold card procedure or lockout/tagout process).
• WPO joint steering committee composed of four EKPC sites to promote communication and standardization of WPO processes, measurements, and CMMS use across the generation teams (see sidebar).
• Supply chain interface to build station and supply chain relationships, lower EKPC costs, and increase reliability.
• Employee visits to Temple-Inland (a steam customer) and EKPC Dispatch, which handles supplying electricity to the grid.

Work Culture Change

Most employees understand the need for change. New construction has increased station capacity and, in turn, requires increased work process discipline for Spurlock to continue to be a safe, low-cost, reliable producer of electric power. Today’s experienced, long-term employees and new employees (both wage and salaried) need to work differently in some aspects of their jobs than they did in the past.

Employees who participated in deliberations and design sessions, have been involved with action teams, or attended scheduling meetings now are aware of WPO and probably have a greater sense of process ownership than those who haven’t had similar experiences. Although some employees may never totally buy into WPO, even those employees can probably appreciate the overall improvements resulting from certain new behaviors, such as:

• Writing a work order before the work is started instead of making a call or grabbing a technician.
• Knowing the hours of maintenance backlog instead of knowing only the number of work orders.
• Planners planning and supervisors supervising instead of anyone planning jobs when they have time.
• Planning jobs before they are scheduled instead of mechanics going to a job to see what they need.
• Using an updated forced/reserve outage list for each unit instead of remembering downtime jobs.
• Formal daily and weekly scheduling meetings instead of contacting people when and if the employee remembers.
• Maintenance personnel integrated with operations on rotating shifts instead of day-only maintenance.
• Documenting schedule compliance and variance codes instead of having a gut feel for schedule misses.
• Having formal work processes to follow instead of assuming who is supposed to do what next.

Continuing the WPO Journey

Work process optimization’s overall objective is to achieve the lowest cost maintenance through optimized work processes. The initial goals of WPO were to:

• Create a standardized, consistently executed work process.
• Improve communication and coordination between stakeholders.
• Increase the safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of the work being performed.

A year and a half into the significant effort to implement WPO, these goals are being realized at Spurlock. The desired future state is becoming a reality. A changeover to an operations-driven culture is taking shape. Employees now have greater opportunities to become involved and contribute to continuous improvement. Corporate and station management are committed to leading and sustaining the WPO initiative to achieve successful outcomes related to the bottom line and the work culture.

Considerable work still needs to be done. Nothing ever seems settled in an environment of continuous improvement and continuous change. Not all the questions have answers yet, and frustrations are partnered with successes. Some work processes are partially implemented, all processes need reinforcement, some employees need coaching, and a few action teams are still needed to complete the first pass through the work management process model shown in Figure 2. The WPO journey and the challenge of change continue.