Using the Flywheel Effect to Transform Your Facility Maintenance Program
Improved Facility Management Performance can be achieved by getting better at Unplanned Work (Corrective Maintenance) in order to free up more time for Planned Work (Proactive Maintenance).
Facilities Management (FM) personnel are being challenged like never before to reduce cost, improve labor efficiency, prevent unplanned downtime, and increase asset lifetime / reliability. Reducing headcount might seem to be a promising cost reduction option on paper, but it would have a negative impact on patient care and occupant satisfaction as getting less work done becomes more visible. A more impactful approach would be to do more planned work (proactive maintenance) and less unplanned work (reactive maintenance) as it would help meet all of the above challenges. Analysis by Virtual Facility indicates that approximately 50% of unplanned work ends up needing to be reworked because the original job was done incorrectly; this provides the potential energy to transform your maintenance program.
Ah but you are probably thinking “Our O&M teams can barely keep up with their backlog of unplanned maintenance, let alone perform more proactive maintenance.” This is where the magic of the “Flywheel Effect” comes into play.
“To transition to more Planned Work, Focus on Getting Better at Unplanned Work (by cutting down on repeat and unsuccessful work), letting the “Flywheel Effect” take over.”
What is the Flywheel Effect
In the sentinel book “Good to Great” published in 2001, Jim Collins shared research on strategies and tactics that high-performing companies followed to transition to greatness. One of the most prescient chapters is on the “Flywheel Effect”, which applies to business models and objectives as strongly today as when the book was first published. Amazon leveraged the Flywheel Effect to successfully transition from an online bookstore to a marketplace that offers supreme convenience and hundreds of millions of products; becoming the go-to shopping outlet for many.
A flywheel is a mechanical device (such as a heavy revolving wheel) that is used to store energy through rotational momentum and to provide stability to a machine. Flywheels are difficult to start rotating from a standstill, but once moving they gradually build momentum, eventually turning by themselves, creating even more momentum through a self-reinforcing loop. According to Collins, this self-reinforcing process is known as “the Flywheel Effect”. One of the characteristics of the “Flywheel Effect” is that with each turn of the flywheel, incremental progress is made building momentum (and motivation) to continue turning the wheel.
Leveraging The “Flywheel Effect” to Change Your Work Practices
Corrective maintenance (unplanned work), also known as a “run-to-failure” strategy, restores the function of a device after it has been allowed to fail. Corrective maintenance, which is the natural outcome of a deliberate “run-to-failure” strategy, can also be viewed as unplanned failures which were not avoided through proactive maintenance.
An investment in improving unplanned work compounds over time, creating more opportunity for planned work, ultimately leading to increased reliability and lower operating costs.
The “Flywheel Effect” for maintenance is activated by minimizing / eliminating repeat and unsuccessful work (more on this later), leading to the series of actions and results shown below.
Action: Drive more-efficient resolution to unplanned work.
Result: The time between equipment failures is extended.
Action: Reduce the amount of unplanned work.
Result: Frees up time to tackle more planned work.
Action: Execute more planned work.
Result: Reduces the likelihood of unplanned equipment failures (and the amount of unplanned work needed).
Action: Repeat to build momentum.
After sufficient momentum is built, a breakthrough point is reached leading to noticeable improvements in reliability and decreases in operating & maintenance costs. Once the flywheel effect is activated and improvement is visible, the frictional forces that often hinder a change in how a company does business (such as commitment, alignment, motivation, and change management) seem to just disappear.
How to Get Better at Unplanned Work
There are a number of different tactics that can be used to get better at unplanned work, including the following:
· Ensuring unplanned work is assigned to the right technician for the job.
· Increasing “wrench time” — the amount of time technicians are actually performing a repair (excluding travel time, getting necessary parts and equipment, etc.).
· Documenting successful work and then referencing it for similar repairs in the future.
· Modifying organization structure so supervisors have adequate time to verify work success and are in the loop for assignment of work.
· Reduce rework and unsuccessful work.
Reducing Rework and Unsuccessful Work
One thing that facility managers have plenty of is alarms. When an equipment failure occurs, it generates an alarm. That alarm can be tied to a maintenance work order, or even better used to automatically generate the work order in the CMMS.
The alarm is then monitored in conjunction with the status of the work order. This allows real-time feedback to be provided regarding the success of the repair and the potential need for a call back. If the alarm does not clear after the work order is closed, then you know that the repair was not successful. If the alarm returns shortly after work closeout, then you know that the root cause was probably not addressed. Reactive maintenance can lead organizations to treat the symptom rather than the problem (root cause); which ultimately leads to higher cost and labor inefficiency.
This data can be used to improve the performance of the O&M team; for example a work ticket can be reissued to the same technician in the event that unresolved or repeat work is detected. This enables managing to performance, not to effort (a subject of a future article).
Benefits of Transitioning to More Proactive Maintenance
“Performing the correct work at the correct time allows the productive use of assets when needed, which leads to reduced O&M costs.”
Shifting to a proactive maintenance approach, including both preventive and predictive techniques, can provide significant benefits to healthcare, higher education, and data center facilities:
· Eliminates catastrophic failures
· Extends asset life
· Minimizes or eliminates the need for overtime
· Focuses on treating the root cause, not the symptom
· Reduces energy usage and increases system reliability since equipment operates closer to its optimal level [Deloitte].
A Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) approach considers equipment condition, consequences of failure, and the operational environment. [HFM] For example, RCM recognizes that a reactive maintenance approach may be most appropriate for inexpensive and non-critical equipment. A common RCM approach uses a mix of different maintenance techniques as shown below.
· < 10% Reactive
· 25% to 35% Preventive
· 45% to 55% Predictive
Conclusion: Get Better at Proactive Maintenance and Add staff (without adding people)
The idea of tying alarms to unplanned work as a means of improving reactive maintenance efficiency, leading to more proactive maintenance, is not a pie-in-the-sky concept. The Virtual Facility platform does this today. One healthcare institution has harnessed the “Flywheel Effect” to move from 42% to 67% proactive maintenance.
Not only does it help you transition to more proactive maintenance, but improving efficiency is like adding people to your team without having to pay them. One of the biggest challenges to be confronted by facility management teams is the loss of experienced people (retirement, the great resignation, skilled labor shortage) and the struggle to replace the knowledge and experience that has been lost. Improving efficiency is a very effective way to make up for losing people.
To find out how your BAS alarms can be used to improve your Unplanned Work process, contact us…
Website: virtualfacility.ai
Email: info@vfacility.ai
References
“Good to Great”, Jim Collins, Harper Collins, New York, NY, 2001.
https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/the-flywheel.html (accessed June 1, 2022)
https://www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/the-flywheel-effect.html#articletop (accessed June 1, 2022)
https://feedvisor.com/resources/amazon-trends/amazon-flywheel-explained/ (accessed June 1, 2022)
“Making maintenance smarter: Predictive maintenance and the digital supply network”, Deloitte University Press, 2017.
Operations & Maintenance Best Practices Guide: A Guide to Achieving Operational Efficiency, Release 3.0, Federal Energy Management Program, 2010.
W.T. Schipper, “Using the RCM process for hospital equipment”, Health Facilities Management, June 2022. https://www.hfmmagazine.com/articles/4512-using-the-rcm-process-for-hospital-equipment
“Study of Operational Maintenance Techniques”, TMA Systems, https://www.tmasystems.com/resources/study-of-operational-maintenance-techniques
