Wrench Time is also known as Tool Time – is the measurement for productivity maintenance of a plant. The amount of time taken by technicians for working with their tools, for actual maintenance work. Efficient plant maintenance systems and regular practices for adequate wrench time enable the company’s resources to achieve more with less.
For maintenance wrench time improvement, first, we should know about the overall processes of Wrench Time. The activities include:
- Information Gathering – How to get the job done in a safe environment with the best results and in a comprehensive manner?
- Travel – Where the required equipment needs to be serviced is located and how others are handling it?
- Service – How long does it take to complete the job from start to finish?
Importance of Wrench Time
Wrench time helps us to determine the efficiency of our plant maintenance. Manufacturing industries are under constant pressure to increase their efficiency and improve maintenance costs. Identifying the right problem at the right time enhances asset management with the assurance of regulatory compliance.
Mobile asset management
Optimized planning is a continuous process and doesn’t happen overnight. The majority of the manufacturing companies have already started automizing their paperwork, inventory management, dispatch, and various other operations with mobile computers. SAP mobile asset solutions from Massetic enable the automatic output of plant maintenance forms with automatic retrieval of all supporting documents.
It includes:
- Document type and status
- The latest version
- Released documents only
- Removing duplicates
- Any additional filter criteria
Massetic mobile asset management solution saves time by constructing each job in a sequence, providing full technical format support, including CAD drawings.
Tools required to improve wrench time
Apart from providing the correct information to the maintenance team, there is also accurate records. Other essential criteria to improve wrench time includes:
- Complete floor plans with asset locations – Proper asset inventory with the effective route and complete floor plans will result in less time spent to travel and come back from a location
- Detailed asset management information – A digitalized asset information is a necessary tool to improve wrench time. This information includes:
- Make, Model, and serial number of the breakdown part
- Appropriate manuals and drawings as a reliable information
- Photographs of the affected part so that the maintenance team does not mess up
All the above tools help provide the correct information to eliminate factors responsible for increasing wrench time.
A correct work order system
The next step to help maximize wrench time is gearing up with the correct data and use it to our advantage. A perfect work order system with a proper mobile asset solution provides:
- Collects and interprets the correct data. You cannot get an accurate picture until a system is not efficient enough to transform the collected data into an understandable format with actionable reports.
- It is simple to understand and handle to ensure that a maintenance team can take it with ease. Software with a better user interface eliminates the hurdle while tracking correct wrench time.
- It provides a reliable and standard framework for data entry to provide more uniform results.
Conclusion
Plant maintenance planning and scheduling help deal with situations when there is some work priority and the plant is down for maintenance. A real-time work scheduler ensures the ability to communicate immediately with all the departments to reallocate resources to other jobs.
Proper plant maintenance eliminates the requirements to hold a surplus of parts and tools in inventory. With the help of the right solution and effective coordination, a company can improve its wrench time and save time and money.