Kitting Up your Work

KIT UP

Kit up is a simple concept, and is one whereby you preassemble work packages and  prepare them for execution off line to the repair, so that when the craftsman engages the work activity, they have every thing they will need in their kit.

Measurement of the kit up rate is an excellent metric, because in order to produce a kit up, the reliability of the planning, scheduling and warehouse methods must be high. It is thus a good thing!

To demonstrate why the reliability of the subordinate processes must be high, we need to examine the serial nature of the process of producing a kit.

The work request must be complete, and contain all the needed information including all the parts, tools, permits, drawings, etc.. If it is not, the planning effectiveness will be lower, and more likely that the planner over time will not be able to completely plan in every way.

If the spare parts policy is lacking, the needed parts either are totally unidentified, or at the very least not on hand or out of stock. As a result, the probability that a work order will arrive in the field without a needed part is higher iif the storeroom management and procurement function is less than adequate.

If the warehouse management is poor, and the warehouse stock integrity is low because the operation is not secured, or does not cycle count, when a needed part is shown in stock, it will not be found, and the probability that a kit will arrive on a job without a needed part increases.

A simple kit up success diagram is shown.

This implies that 9 out of every 10 work orders with materials would have a kit produced.

Rs= 0.97*0.99*0.95*0.99 = 0.90

Or, ONE of every 10, I will send my craftsman looking for a part, somewhere, and as a result, they will not be doing actual work to remove a defect from my plant.

The key is that each sub process must be perfect, just to get 9 out of 10 kits prepared.,

In reality, very few organizations achieve kit ups, fewer reach 90% successful kit up delivery, which is apparent due to the serial reliability nature of the reliability of the support systems.

Very few organizations receive work requests 97% of the time that contain all relevant information.

Very few organizations plan 99 out of 100 work orders with materials or special tools.

If your stock out rate is 10%, you cannot deliver parts 98% of the time,

Many organizations understand the importance of kit up’s as it relates to work efficiency.

Very few understand the compounding effect of the maintenance processes required for kit up to successfully release the maintenance effectiveness possible.

By focusing on producing kits, you will uncover the weakness of your planning, scheduling and warehouse practices.

This alone affords the opportunity to improve.

Simply put, the more kits you CAN produce is an indirect measurement of the state of health of your underlying processes.

If I want to improve, we need to focus our activities on the area that will unleash the largest improvement.

Too know where this opportunity is located we need to measure what is our bottleneck operation.

The measurement of a maintenance bottleneck can be found through the use of a CMMS, and categorization of all open work orders into exclusive states.

The state with the largest amount of work orders usually contains the most work, and is by default then the bottleneck.