Chapter 13
Organization Design for Maintenance Operation Functions and Availability Management

Introduction

The previous chapter developed and applied methods for computing human, material, tools, equipment, and facility resources. They determined the position of operational availability (A₀) with respect to achievable availability (A_B). The other major determinate is organizational effectiveness.

This chapter will address the following deliverables (Figure 13-1):

Fig. 13–1 Detailed design phase availability engineering deliverables of organization design for maintenance operations and availability management.

• Functional analysis and design of the maintenance operation (AD7).
• Organization analysis and design for availability management (ADS).

AD7. Analysis and Design of Maintenance Operation Functions

Definition and Purpose

Ultimately maintenance operations must be carefully defined and developed. This should be done in recognition of the fundamental business purpose of such operations, which is the delivery of the plant’s most profitable availability performance.

Indirect Functions of Maintenance Operations

There are availability management functions that are indirectly instrumental to a profitable maintenance operation. Their nature is more closely aligned to availability management. These functions are not just limited to maintenance functions, but are associated with all aspects of the availability scheme. Thus, they and their tools are the force for maintaining and advancing the effectiveness and efficiency of maintenance operations. These functions are identified in the next deliverable.

The objective of Part 6 is to show that these are also key functions of overall production and business system management. In that context, they are important with respect to classic corporate, operating company and plant-level cycles of management decisions and implementation.

Fundamental Philosophy of Organizational Effectiveness

There is a fundamental philosophy behind the objectives of this and the next deliverable. It is that the maintenance functions must be identified and then carefully structured and planned. Otherwise, the overall availability scheme will suffer.

This is likely to be the result of the following:

• Some necessary roles or functions may unknowingly be omitted. This is especially true for important roles that are not highly visible in plant maintenance operations.
• There are likely to be conflicts of interest with respect to organizational psychologies and the responsibilities they have been entrusted with.
• The full necessary flow of information and decisions will not be possible. It will instead be short-circuited, dead-ended or slowed.
• The capacity of the organization may not match the challenges that confront it. Such a mismatch can be in terms of inadequate or excessive abilities. Both are costly.

Recall that operational availability (A₀) includes administrative processes that affect the total time-to-maintain. Therefore, this and the next deliverable are important determinates of availability performance.

Job Positions and Departments

Each reference in this and the next deliverable of “activities” should not be taken as a requirement for a job position or department. Individuals and entities are typically responsible for multiple activities. This is one reason why the principles of organizational design presented in the next deliverable are so critical. The inappropriate allocation of activities to a single management or administrative entity can reduce operational availability.

Categories of Maintenance Operation Management

Maintenance operation activities can be classified as follows (Figure 13-2):

Fig. 13–2 Scope of maintenance operation functions.

• Field management activities are:
  planning and scheduling,
  field supervision and control of maintenance, and engineering.
• Maintenance resources management activities are:
  human resource management,
  management of repair/spare parts, components, and materials,
  equipment and tools management.
  technical manuals management,
  facilities management, and engineering.

• Quality assurance and control are introduced with respect to availability engineering and management. There are two dimensions to that discussion:
  How the maintenance operation functions can perform in more advanced ways.
  How availability performance and its improvement is dependent on the quality of maintenance operation functions.

Maintenance Management Functions

As mentioned, maintenance operations include the management and administrative support of field activities. These include the following functions:

• Planning and scheduling.
• Field supervision and control of maintenance.
• Engineering.

Planning and scheduling. The objectives of the planning and scheduling functions are to

Improve availability performance.
Improve the productivity of resources.
Plan for requirements before they become a crisis.
Have work performed on schedule.

The function may include a preventive maintenance manager, whose activities would be planning, organizing, and controlling scheduled maintenance (shutdown). This may also include the management of routine or routed maintenance tasks including testing, inspecting, servicing, and adjusting.

Planning and scheduling functions are responsible for three types of maintenance planning. They are daily, annual and long-range planning. Their nature is as follows:

• Daily planning and scheduling: Daily planning is responsible for
  • insuring that a task scope is defined to solve the problem;
  • allocating people and resources to tasks;
  • interfacing with the tag-out function of plant operations functioning;
  • developing detail prior to the maintenance task start date including instructions, resources, event dates, and the work order;
  • managing capacity and workload fluctuations; and
  • taking advantage of the opportunity to utilize temporarily excessive resources.
    Planning is the beneficiary of maintenance task analysis (AD1). Its detail serves as input for the planning of current tasks.
    Short-term planning is also the beneficiary of the availability model, which is used to assess the significance of each current failure. The most relevant modeled measure of online performance is inherent availability (A_i), which is the availability expected between scheduled shutdowns. Recall that it also assumes a perfect maintenance environment. Thus, it focuses on the significance of each new failure.
    This focus is important because expected availability is reduced with each failure. However, the consequences are not always felt until the plant’s production is reduced or must cease. This point was introduced in Chapter 1.
    online inherent availability analysis allows the planner to fully understand the true importance of each new failure. This determination is made in the context of the failures that already exist in the plant as a system. This would otherwise not be possible.
    Of course, the daily planning functions will draw upon the various business systems for maintenance operations. In fact, maintenance task analysis places its product in their databases.
    
• Annual planning: Annual planning is the allocation and determination of staffing and other resource levels. It is also planning for major maintenance events. This planning level draws upon the availability and financial models, the maintenance logic-tree analysis and resource calculation models.
  Modeling of achievable availability (A_a) is used to evaluate alternate approaches to major maintenance events. Chapter 9 described availability as a peaking curve. The curve is a plot of possible plant performance. Actual performance reflects the plant’s location on the curve. It is a function of electing scheduled (time-based) versus unscheduled maintenance for failures. The latter is the issue for annual planning.
  Modeling of operational availability (A₀) is used for assessing and forecasting required human, material, equipment, tools, and facility resource levels. Chapter 9 also showed that planning determines where operational availability (A₀) will be positioned relative to the achievable availability (A_a) curve. The latter requires that the planned production levels be translated to their consequences for achievable availability.
  The issue of relative position is important. Chapter 9 showed that there is a ceiling to operational availability. Beyond that point, additional resources have no effect. Their expenditure only results in lost income and diminished productivity of working assets.
  Therefore, annual planning will use the availability models to avoid two setbacks:
  • operating the plant to the right or left of the availability peak, and
  • attempting to raise operational availability beyond its upper limit.
• Long-range planning: Long-range planning is a part of larger corporate and operating company planning functions. Both the “hard” and “flexible” elements of the plant are subject to revision.
  The consequence of the planning function can range from the realignment of the maintenance operation scheme to the partial redesign of the plant. Thus, long-range planning is part of availability management rather than just maintenance operations management.
  Therefore, the driving issue of long-range planning is the relative positions of achievable and operational availability. Thus, the capability for living availability design and analysis has the following applications:
  • Quantifying the rate that changing operating conditions over the long-term will force achievable availability downward.
  • Quantifying the rate that management will need to push operational availability upward. This is the rate that the plant’s capacity for availability performance is being progressively utilized.
  • Making strategic decisions for repositioning the two curves. This will be the case as the above trends converge to an upper limit for operational availability.

The difference between these planning functions is the breadth of their impact. Daily planning utilizes existing conditions to return plant items to service. Annual planning is concerned with achieving a level of performance with respect to the plant’s current capacity for availability. Long-range planning will possibly revise that capacity. It will be driven by the goal to plan the gap between possible and actual performance.

Field supervision and control. The objectives of the functions of supervising and controlling field tasks are as follows:

• To supervise and inspect work.
• To assure that the information required at the completion of the work order is complete, correct and transmitted to the data collection system.
• To approve the finished work and assure that the associated work order is appropriately processed.
• To provide feedback on the effectiveness and efficiency of maintenance of support functions.

The functions will span all plant tasks falling in the maintenance domain. This is so even when some are assigned to the operations departments.

Field supervision functions are crucial to maintaining the integrity of the availability scheme. This is because field events determine if reality matches what is planned. This has the the following dimensions:

• Predicted reliability of plant items is partially the result of minimizing human error in maintenance. It causes plant availability performance to be distorted by the quality of the repair task. Poor work can introduce infant mortality and increase failure rates.
• Supervision is also key to assuring that time-to-maintain is kept within the planned interval.

These functions are key to meeting the specified availability performance that the engineering processes determined to be possible. This control assures the received feedback is actually a reflection of the planned system. This feedback is critical because it confirms that the assumptions in the current availability calculation are reasonable. From there, the availability scheme and its assumptions may be proven and improved.

Resource Management Functions

The second category of maintenance functions are those of resource management. They are the following:

• Human resources management.
• Management of repair/spare parts, components and materials.
• Equipment and tools management.
• Facilities management.
• Management of instruction and procedures manuals.

Human resource management. The human resource management function has immense breadth. It is not possible to explore all of its functions in this book. However, its most obvious responsibilities are hiring, firing, developing and training, promoting, administration, etc.

The roles of human resource management are dispersed throughout the plant, operating company, and corporate entities. This is because its holistic view is concerned with the following as a system of organizational issues:

• The interest of stakeholders such as employee groups, management, shareholders, government, community, etc.
• Existing situational factors such as the nature of the work force, business strategies, laws, etc.
• Human resource management policies for the flow of personnel through the organization, capacity for employee influence, reward systems, etc.
• The outcome of human resource policies with respect to employee commitment and congruence with organization direction, competence, and cost-effectiveness.
• Long-term consequences of the human resource scheme with respect to the effect on individuals and society, organizational effectiveness, etc.

Many of these issues are part of overall organizational development. Thus, they are naturally integral to the next deliverable.

One aspect of human resource management is the replacement of personnel lost due to attrition. It is also to respond to both increasing and decreasing demand for personnel. The maintenance task analysis and resource analysis deliverables are important to this role. They provide a means of forecasting personnel requirements in terms of timing, magnitude, skills, and aptitude.

Management of spare/repair parts, components, and materials. The management of spare/repair parts, components, and maintenance materials is a critical resource management function. Its functions have many facets. Some feel that they have historically been a significant source of reduced plant productivity [Herbaty, 1983]. Such consequences would be reflected in operational availability (A₀).

The functions for parts, components, and materials are as follows:

• Provisioning: Provisioning is the function of determining and establishing the need to stock parts, components, and materials. This function is served by maintenance task analysis (AD1).
• Purchasing: Purchasing is concerned with sources, pricing, etc. One goal is “smart buying.” It depends upon being able to identify and plan common purchase requirements.
  One key is knowing all uses of any resource item. Having a sense of the usage rate is also crucial. The former information comes from the maintenance task analysis system. The latter is extracted from the consumable resource analysis system.
• Expediting: Expediting is the verification and tracking of the progress of an order until it arrives at the receiving dock.
• Receiving: Receiving determines that parts are received in the proper quantity and quality. This is a singular process. The receiving staff determines that parts are received and in proper quantity. The inspection staff evaluates the quality of the received items. One reason for this distinction is that inspection is often a technical or specialized process. Receiving is not.
• Kitting: Kitting is the function of pulling and collecting parts, etc., as a kit. This is done in preparation for an identified maintenance task. Requirements are identified by the work order.
• Stock room management: Management of stock rooms and bench-stocks is a function generally responsible for the jobs associated with receiving, inspection, storing, inventory control tasks, kitting, issuing, and residual materials.
• Inventory control: Inventory control is concerned with calculating and controlling stocking levels which are the work products of the deliverable and living systems for determining consumable resource requirements (AD4.4, Chapter 12). Inventory control will likely manage and utilize these capabilities. The function’s full contribution to business results depends on its use of these living availability design subsystems.
• Cataloging: The parts and component cataloging function and system are a key element of parts and materials control. The primary objective is to maintain a catalogue of parts and components. This is to assure that all parts are identified according to uniform descriptions and details. This gives management the ability to analyze and search for opportunities to standardize parts; avoid treating the same part as two different parts, thus increasing stocking levels; and avoid false stock outages and consequent costs such as rush orders, subsystem outages, etc.
  The detail captured and maintained in maintenance task analysis systems provides the base information on which the catalog is developed. This function involves maintaining the integrity of the catalogue and its source data.

The detail captured and maintained in maintenance task analysis systems provides the base information on which the catalog is developed. This function involves maintaining the integrity of the catalogue and its source data.

Equipment and tools management. The equipment and tools management function is responsible:

• Acquiring and maintaining the stocking levels of equipment and tools,
• Maintenance and calibration of testing equipment,
• Transportation and recovery of tools and equipment, and
• Staying abreast of new developments and technology with respect to tools and equipment.

This function both benefits from and manages associated segments of the maintenance task analysis and service resource analysis systems. The former identifies all applications. It also collects all background information for their management. The latter availability systems allow the function to determine necessary provisioning levels.

Facilities management. Another resource management function is maintaining facilities. This function may be the same as the previous one. This is because the problems and concerns are the same with respect to the associated tools and equipment.

Instructions and procedures manuals management. Maintenance instructions and procedures are basic to the plant information system. Thus, their management is a crucial support function. It must be concerned with the integrity and improvement of technical manuals. It must be equally concerned with the library system, and its integrity and improvement.

The design of this function is a task of the deliverable for developing technical materials and associated management systems and organization (AD2, Chapter 11).

Engineering

Maintenance management must include engineering functions as in any other technology. They often deal with special reliability and maintainability problems. The work of the engineering functions will span daily, annual, and long-term horizons.

Consequently, the engineering functions will greatly utilize the system of living availability design as a source of tools for dealing with the planning, analysis, and design for change.

Figure 13-2 shows that the engineering function can logically appear in two places. However, the next deliverable (organization design) will show that all engineering roles should probably not reside in one or the other. This demarcation generally reflects the time horizon of assigned activities. It may also be a function of whether its tasks are generally routine or ad hoc in nature.

Quality Assurance and Control

Quality assurance functions are part of maintenance and resource management operations. They may be specific to various functions or they may be formed as a function concerned with overall plant functioning.

The concern of quality assurance functions is whether the right things are being done and if they are being done right. Thus, they are not just responsible for confirming that tasks were done correctly. They must also be concerned with whether management has tangible proof that this is normally the case.

This function is heavily incorporated in availability engineering and management. Practices documents have been developed for its use. availability modeling and FMECA have uncovered the areas where performance is sensitive to plant practices. Thus, the quality assurance function will focuses on these areas.

Computer Systems and Integration

Many computer systems are available to serve resource management functions. They serve the needs for:

• Equipment information.
• Work order management.
• Maintenance management and planning.
• A work package library.
• Cost information.
• Materials and purchasing management.

Each incorporates parts of the previously described systems for availability engineering and management. Thus, it is necessary to identify the systems to be used. They are then integrated into the overall availability engineering and management process. Ultimately they are planned for and incorporated in the availability-centered data management system.

This determination was first addressed in the conceptual design phase. A task formulated the concept that was developed for the configuration of an overall system scheme (AC2.10, Chapter 3). It was then refined as its subsystems were rigorously defined by later deliverables.

Tasks for Analyzing and Defining Maintenance Operation Functions

The tasks for accomplishing the deliverable are described in the following sections. They are presented as a flowchart in Figure 13-3. The flowchart includes sequences and iterations with tasks in parallel and previous deliverables.

Fig. 13–3 Tasks for analyzing and designing maintenance operation functions (AD7 of Figure 13-1).

AD7.1. Develop process and linkage diagrams for maintenance operations. The first task is to develop rigorous process and linkage diagrams of all maintenance operation functions. The objective is to flowchart all administrative, logistic and management activities. The results are reconciled with the maintenance task analysis. An earlier task defined the network of steps in each maintenance task (AD1.3.6, Chapter 11). The results of this deliverable are used to refine that detail.

The results of the task flow to the overall diagrams developed as part of the availability-centered improvement, change, and data management tools (AB2.2, Chapter 5).

AD7.2. Identify the processes that will utilize availability tools, processes, and systems. Many of the maintenance functions directly capitalize on the living availability design. They are short, middle, and long-term planning functions.

This task is to identify such functions. It is then to rigorously detail their use of availability tools, processes, and systems.

AD7.3. Identify roles of maintenance operations in availability engineering and management. Availability management depends on some maintenance operation processes to maintain and improve the integrity of the availability scheme. An example is field supervision.

This task is to identify such cases. Accordingly, availability management must assure that they are rigorously detailed in the process and linkage diagrams for maintenance operations.

AD7.4. Identify, select, and integrate maintenance operation computer systems. Maintenance operations make use of different computer systems. As mentioned, some of these are also systems serving availability engineering and management functions.

Therefore, this task is to make final systems and configuration decisions with respect to maintenance operations. The issue is which offered systems will be acquired and how they will be integrated.

Figure 13-3 shows that the results of this task flow to the one to define the availability-centered data management system (AB2.5, Chapter 5). The overall system scheme is refined accordingly.

AD7.5. Develop a preliminary structure of roles, responsibilities and authorities. A structure of functions, responsibilities, authorities and roles is developed for the maintenance operation. However, it is considered as preliminary. This has been the case for other deliverables in which an organization was defined. This is because the next deliverable (ADS) is to design the entire availability organization. It will include the maintenance organization as an organizational subsystem along with others. The final task of the deliverable (AD8.7) will refine the conclusions of this task.

AD7.6. Estimate staff levels and maintenance operations costs. The preceding tasks have defined the maintenance operation. This task is to estimate the cost.

Figure 13-3 shows that the results will flow to the plant financial model (AB7.8, Chapter 7). Staffing becomes part of the income statement subsystem. They also affect the balance sheet subsystem. This is the case for working assets required to support maintenance operations payroll and overhead. Assets such as computer systems also enter the balance sheet subsystems. They then flow to the income subsystem over time.

AD7.7. Estimate time for each process in the linkage diagrams. An earlier task developed detailed process and linkage diagrams for maintenance operations (AD7.1). They were then used to refine the detail of the maintenance task analysis.

This task is to assign time to each process in the diagram. Figure 13-3 shows that the detail flows to the maintenance task analysis. The objective is to attach administrative times to maintenance task steps (AD1.3.8, Chapter 11). The maintenance task analysis processes then cause these refinements to iterate back to the availability parameters and model.

AD8. Organization Design for Availability Management

Definition and Purpose

The enumeration of all necessary activities for managing overall availability performance does not automatically lead to efficient or effective organizational results. Instead, there are fundamental analytical requirements. The purpose of this deliverable is to apply them in the design of an appropriate availability organization.

Summary of Organization Design Requirements

There have been useful concepts of design developed over many years by organization development theorists. They are applied here as an analytical process concerned with the following:

• A common direction given some title as vision, mission, goals, objectives, strategies, etc.
• A detailed knowledge of work processes and linkages both within and and across the availability functions.
• Identification of the working processes in two categories of importance: those that are immediately critical to successful availability management; and those that will eventually undermine availability performance if poorly done.
• Psychological holism that will allow all important organizational mentalities to exist and balance against each other.
• The type of structure necessary to allow the flow of information and decisions between processes and organizational psychologies.
• A detailed structure of responsibilities ownership and authorities.

Three of the these concepts deserve special attention. They are the requirements for common direction, psychological holism, and flow of information and decisions. Each will be discussed in the following sections.

The tasks for organization design will subsequently be introduced. They will provide a process through which these requirements may be applied to the design.

Organizational design was identified as a task in other deliverables. The process described in the next section is applied in those cases. However, this deliverable will refine and integrate the findings of each in a monolithic scheme for availability management.

A Common Direction

Organizational design begins with setting the purpose or basic direction for availability management and its functions. The resulting statements are given many names such as mission, purpose, goals, objectives, etc. Regardless of terminology, any statement of direction must have the qualities that give individuals and small groups a sense of what is important, where to place their priorities, etc.

Figure 13-4 shows that there are minimum requirements for defining organizational direction. It also shows that they must be correlated to the owner’s larger organizational purpose and environment. The minimum requirements are defining the basic purpose of the organization, and developing a set of objectives.

Fig. 13–4 Structure of the common direction formulated for the availability organization.

Basic purpose. The first fundamental requirement is to define the basic purpose of the organization. Although expressed in a simple statement, an organization’s basic purpose is rarely immediately obvious. Consequently, the statement is just that much more critical to organizational success.

Business purpose is unique to each availability organization even though they entail the same functions producing the same work product. The reason is that the needs of each plant are different. This is because the plant is an extension of the owner’s overall business strategies. Accordingly, there is a unique combination of surrounding and internal conditions facing the subject plant that affects its availability organization.

Another variable in the definition of direction is management’s vision. Some owners may limit availability management to plant-level goals. Others may capitalize on the full potential of availability management. They will strive to include corporate and operating company goals in the scope of availability management.

This suggests that the purpose statement should not be just a definition of what the organization produces: availability design, management and maintenance. Instead, it should define the purpose of the organizational product with respect to the plant’s needs, performance in the context of business environments, and its role in the plant owner’s grand scheme.

An example is the purpose of maintenance operations. It is tempting to define it as efficient and effective maintenance of equipment. However, that is its product. Its generic purpose is to profitability deliver the necessary availability performance the plant is capable of providing. The exact nature of this purpose will vary for each plant.

Set of objectives. The second requirement for setting a common direction is a set of objectives. These are a more definitive expression of how the availability organization will achieve its purpose.

Objectives are multidimensional. They often include financial, service level, human resource management, materials management, environmental protection, safety, and management and quality assurance objectives.

These objectives are common to every organization. The difference is their relative importance. Some are goals. Others are constraints to be recognized in achieving those goals. For example, a goal objective for maintenance operations may be associated with a service level. The remaining objectives are constraints to be worked with while still achieving the stated service level.

Conceptual phase. Setting direction will not first occur at the time of this deliverable. One reason is that the many previous deliverables are guided by a common direction.

Direction was first addressed during the conceptual design phase. The following things occurred:

• Management established policies for availability engineering and management throughout the plant’s lifetime (AC1, Chapter 3). These defined the expectations for availability management in normal plant and business functioning.
• The availability concept defined the plant in the context of the owner’s larger production and business system (AC2.2). It also explored the role of plant performance in the owner’s strategies (AC2.3).
• The maintenance operation concept explored and established policies for such operations in the owner’s larger production system (AC3.5).

Psychological Holism in the Organization

The second organizational design requirement to be singled out for discussion is the creation of psychological holism. The goal is to allow all important mentalities and, therefore, their associated business processes to perform in good form. Thus, they will counterbalance each other in normal functioning.

Psychological holism may seem esoteric. However, weakness in this aspect of organizational design is evident in many ways. It may be one of the biggest reasons that organizations fail to thrive, achieve true quality, or achieve other goals that are crucial to its business success.

Effectiveness and efficiency. Successful organizations are both effective and efficient. Effectiveness is the degree to which activities and outputs are correlated to the owner’s markets and other realities. Efficiency is the ratio of inputs to outputs. Both are critical to survival.

The organizational elements and behavior for effectiveness and efficiency are not easily isolated and tagged. Therefore, the designer needs a framework for determining what constitutes psychological completeness for the subject availability organization and its management operations. Only then can management be assured that their enterprise will be both effective and efficient. Subsystems analysis provides such a framework especially with respect to effectiveness.

Network of roles in subsystems. An organization is people in a network of roles. They are all related to one of five subsystems, and each has a particular significance to organizational success.

The subsystems are universal. The roles within them vary for each organization. This is because of the organization’s nature and strategies. Thus, the same role in two similar organizations can be characterized by different subsystems. Furthermore, the subsystems and their roles do not rest neatly in hierarchies, functions, and departments. Nor is their influence on the organization equal or static.

The subsystem dynamic. Each subsystem generates pressure for its own survival and advancement. This is called a dynamic. These must be understood and translated to the availability management functions. The objective is to determine how the structured relationships between organizational roles will either enable or prevent the effectiveness of the overall availability management scheme.

It is ultimately critical that each subsystem as a set of roles be structured to harness its dynamic. Otherwise, it will become a destructive force against plant and overall business performance.

The five subsystems. Analysis of psychological holism in the organizational structure is based on the following five subsystems [Katz and Kahn, 1979] shown in Figure 13-5:

Fig. 13–5 Five organizational subsystems and their relationship for achieving organizational holism.

• The production subsystem is concerned with the core production process of the availability scheme. For plant availability, this is maintenance.
• The production support subsystem is concerned with the acquisition of inputs to the production subsystem, for garnering acceptance of the maintenance result; and for the external relations that aid its acceptance.
• The integrity control subsystem ties people into their defined roles. Thus, they maintain integrity of the organization’s processes.
• The adaptive subsystem is concerned with the response to change.
• The managerial subsystem is concerned with the direction, adjudication, control, and integration of the other subsystems.

Method of the five subsystems. There is a method for capitalizing on the subsystem theory. It is to define each subsystem in terms of the availability and maintenance management activities they represent. The dynamic of the functions can then be understood and defined with respect to its sub-system nature.

This must be done for each plant. There is no universal solution to fit all availability and maintenance organizations.

A structure is finally detailed as a later step in organization design. The results of subsystem analysis will be reflected by the location of each activity in that structure. The chosen placement will help assure the efficiency and effectiveness of each. Otherwise, some will be undermined by others. This is the result of an inappropriate structuring of subsystem dynamics.

It was mentioned that any organization is surrounded by differences in internal and external cases. These include external needs, environments, and overall organization. It was also mentioned that organizational roles were not universal to each subsystem. This is because of these internal and external cases.

Therefore, it is easy to visualize the potential consequences of failing to analyze and design for psychological holism. Worse, the resulting dysfunction may be too subtle to spot as management seeks solutions to these problems. In some cases, management may not even be able to define the true symptom.

Production subsystem. The production subsystem is concerned with the core production activity of availability. Thus, the subsystem is responsible for the efficient use of resources to produce timely and effective maintenance. Its activities comprise the core productive processes of the availability organization. Therefore, it is no surprise that an availability organization may come to be identified by its main productive process. In this case, maintenance.

However, such a definition is harmful. The availability organization may come to behave strictly as a maintenance organization. Its direction may drift from achieving management’s specified profit-effective availability performance.

The dynamic of the production subsystem is to maximize the proficiency of its work in terms of maintenance task accomplishment. Accordingly, it should drive toward developing standard skills and methods.

This does not mean that it will naturally rise to the highest level of potential performance. Maintenance processes may become arrested at a stage of development. This is because maintenance proficiency and the advancement of plant performance are generally conflicting goals.

Workers and functions driven by proficiency can even become negative in their attitude toward higher-level performance goals. They can come to resist stepping out of their normal roles to cooperate on matters important to total availability performance.

This too suggests the possible damage from defining the subject organization by its production subsystem. This dynamic will be able to dominate and crush other important contrary dynamics more easily. Specifically, it will diminish and destroy other roles that make it more difficult to maximize the production subsystem dynamic of proficiency.

The production support subsystem. The production support subsystem either carries out or aids the activities to acquire resources and win acceptance of the maintenance field work product. Some of its actions are a direct extension of the production subsystem activities. This is the case for acquiring resources, planning their application, and gaining acceptance of the maintenance result. In the last case, its dynamic is to convince the remaining availability and larger owner organization that “what it gets is what it wants.”

Supplier and customer resistance to current maintenance practices can also evolve as a result of the need for maintenance operations to serve their changing needs. If the pressure is successful, plant maintenance functioning will be forced to change its service level, approaches, etc.

It is important to recognize that the ultimate decisions to respond to this pressure are made in the managerial subsystem. The production support subsystem is only a secondary force for such change by virtue of generating feedback information. Otherwise, the subsystem is not a champion of change. This is because its fundamental dynamic is to sustain the field maintenance processes as they are.

The functions associated with the production support subsystem include those for planning and acquiring resources for both short-term and longer-term requirements. In this capacity, an example of its dynamic is to pressure for excess resources. Thus, the proficiency of the production subsystem is not encumbered by the need to be more sophisticated in its management practices.

The contribution of this subsystem to the production subsystem’s output makes its value both tangible and visible. Therefore, it and the production subsystems are a fundamental natural threat to plant availability performance. This is because their direct and tangible nature allows them to easily dominate conflicting roles in other subsystems.

The combined dynamic will be most concerned with the proficiency of field maintenance. This is in terms of the greatest convenience to maintenance as the production subsystem. Consequently, the dynamics of the other subsystems are constraints that proficiency must be achieved within. The result is an ongoing natural conflict between contrary dynamics.

It is common to find failing or poorly performing organizations whose core production activities epitomize efficiency. This is the case when the proficiency dynamic has come to dominate the conflict.

The integrity-control subsystem. The roles of the integrity-control subsystem are directed at the organizational “equipment” for getting the work done.¹ In the availability organization, work consists of the actions of humans in accordance with established procedures. Therefore, the organizational “equipment” whose integrity must be maintained is people.

¹ This subsystem would have been called the “maintenance” subsystem except for the confusion it would create in the discussion of availability management.

There is no guarantee that people will accept, perform, and remain in their roles. Therefore, the subsystem’s roles to recruit, incorporate, motivate, develop, reward, and monitor people are part of the integrity subsystem. The result is to tie people into the overall availability management scheme as integrated functioning parts.

The production-support subsystem is concerned with providing inputs to the production subsystem. By comparison, the integrity control subsystem is concerned with whether the inputs are of an appropriate quality. This is accomplished through the selection of appropriate personnel. It then continues with personnel development, control, and reward.

Thus, the functions and elements of this subsystem are as follows:

• Human resource management.
• Procedures.
• Training programs.
• Quality assurance and reliability processes applied to field activities.

The fundamental purpose of the subsystem is to maintain integrity through the stability and predictability of the availability management organization. Therefore, its dynamic is to preserve a state of equilibrium.

The subsystem will attempt to formalize all aspects of organizational behavior. For example, when a maintenance procedure is developed and legitimized, the problems of unpredictability and instability are greatly reduced. Thus, organizational survival is insured in the short-term. Things are maintained as they are. Change is restricted.

Pressures to change often come from demands external to the availability organization. In turn, the overall availability task must change in some degree. The integrity-control subsystem is threatened by such change in the following respects:

• Some part of its activities may no longer be relevant or even required.
• Demands may be made for activities for which the subsystem is not equipped to handle.

These threats are especially significant to the integrity-control subsystem. This is because some parts of it could easily cease to exist. And survival is a driving dynamic of all subsystems. Thus, the subsystem can easily become absorbed in its own survival. It will then strive to keep the current organizational elements that exist in place. This is even as their relevance to plant availability performance diminishes and finally becomes an obstacle.

This situation suggests the nature of dysfunction when the integrity-control subsystem is allowed to dominate. The availability organization and its maintenance operations will become increasingly rigid. They will lose their ability to respond to changing business and operating conditions, initiatives to improve plant productivity and participate in normal corporate, operating company, and plant level management cycles.

The adaptive subsystem. The adaptive subsystem and, therefore, its dynamic is concerned with change. Thus, it is an important part of psychological holism. The other subsystems are not fundamentally concerned with response to necessary change and to ultimate destiny of the organization. They are concerned instead with availability functioning at it is.

Therefore, a subsystem must exist that is chartered to seek and identify changes in the plant’s environment. These environments are:

Corporate and operating company entities that regard the plant as an asset in its overall strategies.

Sources and suppliers of human and material resources.

Other upstream, downstream, and parallel production facilities that comprise the production system of which the plant is a part. The production system of concern is both internal and external to the owner’s total enterprise.

The subsystem must see both the short and especially long-term big picture. It is concerned with vision. Consequently, its functions are essentially the responsibility of top-level availability management. However, in large organizations with complex activities, they require specialists devoted to research, development, and planning. This is also the case for availability management.

Therefore, the adaptive subsystem will be characterized by the following:

• Functions associated with the entire set of analytical processes for availability engineering and management,
• The associated analysis models,
• Functions responsible for availability-centered improvement, and change, and data management systems and functions.

• The subsystem’s people will manage availability engineering and management design tools, systems, and associated functions, specialists in fields such as reliability and maintenance, and long-term maintenance planning functions.

Both the integrity control and adaptive subsystems expand the basic organization. They add the specialized activities that must exist to develop, manage, and utilize the living availability design and its systems.

Therefore, both subsystems are vulnerable. Their contribution to organizational results is both short and long-term and both tangible and intangible. Their immense contribution is not generally measurable by simple cost-benefit calculations. Consequently, history shows that both are obvious targets for cost-cutting and downsizing. That is if they were ever even allowed to come in to existence. Both possibilities may be the case as early as the plant conceptual design phase.

The consequences of succumbing to this vulnerability can have a permanent effect. Other subsystems will become dominant when the adaptive subsystem is weakened or even eliminated. Once lost, this dominance will easily be able to prevent or make it very difficult to reinstate an effective adaptive psychology.

The management subsystem. The management subsystem controls, coordinates and directs the other four subsystems. Its dynamic is to achieve their integration. It is also to adjust the total availability scheme to optimally serve its ultimate role in the owner’s environment, production, and business systems. Consequently, the actions of the management subsystem do the following:

• Affect large parts of the availability organization.
• Develop rather than implement availability policies.
• Formulate rather than enforce rules.

The management subsystem will optimize the entire system. It will do so by suboptimizing and constraining the dynamics of each subsystem. Management will never be able to easily achieve perfection in this goal. This is especially so for complex organizational tasks such as availability management. Consequently, the subsystem depends upon natural inter-subsystem conflict to be effective. Accordingly, there must be an availability management structure that enables a “fair fight” between the other four subsystems. This is a fundamental objective of psycological holism in organization design.

To that end, the management subsystem includes legislative, executive, and judicial functions. It also has the task of matching plant productivity requirements with resources the overall availability organization can acquire for that purpose. Accordingly, it must set and implement policies. These requirements are founded on the findings developed by the adaptive subsystem.

The dynamic for change of the adaptive subsystem is implemented through the management subsystem. The gathering and analysis of data and the offering of recommendations are the roles of the adaptive subsystem. The decision to adopt its findings is the role of the management subsystem.

The activities that comprise the management subsystem for availability will depend on the owner’s overall organization design. Its top functioning may rest with the plant manager or a position somewhere just below. However, it could just as easily rest in the operating company. The latter may be the case if the owner wishes to optimize availability performance across its plants.

Regardless of location, it is a position that will have a continuing responsibility for achieving and managing profit-effective plant availability. This is compared to having primary responsibility for a subdivision of availability such as maintenance operations.

This suggests a basic criterion for assignment. Positions that are responsible for aspects of the production, production support, or integrity control subsystems should not also be made responsible for the management subsystem. The potential for organizational dysfunction will be too great.

This criterion is not as critical with respect to the adaptive subsystem. This is because some of its aspects represent specialized roles in behalf of the management subsystem. Furthermore, if the adaptive subsystem has a marginal presence, the result of the management subsystem will also be marginal. Therefore, making such an assignment will allow the management subsystem to protect the processes that are crucial to its own effectiveness.

Application of the concept. The application of subsystem theory is easy to visualize. The subsystems are used to identify how activities can be grouped as functions. Just as important is a determination of how they should not be grouped. The result is to assure the integrity of all activities. It is also to prevent some functions from gaining dominance.

The basic process for applying the concept is simple. It is as follows:

• Identify and understand the role of each organizational activity.
• Use the understanding of each activity to identify which of the five subsystems it is part of.
• Each subsystem has a dynamic. Therefore, define the specific dynamic of each activity. This will be guided by the nature of the subsystem it represents.
• Project how that dynamic can undermine overall availability performance generally and other functions specifically.
  For example, the maintenance field operations should not house the functions that analyze and respond to changing owner needs. The result may be no true or significant response.
  Another example is that the same maintenance functions should not be structured to have inappropriate influence in the determination of support resources levels. The result can easily be field maintenance supported with excessive (slack) resources.
• Finally, define how the activities must be grouped to be effective in the management of availability performance.

Structure for the Flow of Information and Systems

The discussion of this deliverable began by listing the six basic requirements or steps in organizational design. Three were to be discussed in depth before the tasks of organizational design were introduced. The following discussion is the third case. That is to determine the fundamental structure necessary to allow the flow of information and decisions between the organization’s work processes.

All activities must ultimately be attached to some structure. The chosen type of structure will create varying outcomes. This is because of relative capacity of any scheme to absorb the information and then make timely, informed decisions.

The structural strategy has another implication. It determines a considerable cost of organizational functioning. The savings from an inexpensive, but inappropriate structure will be lost many times over through reduced efficiency and effectiveness. An overly capable structure will easily achieve the desired productivity, but at excessive cost. Consequently, the appropriate structure is important to the owner’s financial performance.

The purpose of the following discussion is to introduce a framework of understanding on which to design the availability management organization for necessary information and decision processes. The framework is based on an information and decision processes model (Figure 13-6) for organization design developed by Jay Galbraith [1973]. It is used because it steps beyond constantly changing popular buzzwords and fads of organizational development and returns to the timeless root concepts they tend to mask.

Fig. 13–6 Concept for information flow and decision in the organization (Galbraith concept).

The organization design problem. A fundamental organization design problem is to integrate all activities in the successful execution of overall availability management. The greater the differences between them, the more difficult it is. This is even more the case if the activities and their resources have some degree of uncertainty. Accordingly, more information must be processed, more decisions made, and more actions taken. The challenge is further increased if information is also uncertain in both timing and content.

The amount of information required for plant availability management is a function of the following factors:

• The diversity that is inherent to tasks for availability performance. For example, the diversity of a field maintenance task is measured by the number of possible causes, challenges in troubleshooting, services involved in each type of failure, etc.
• The range of diverse technical specialties, capabilities, and technologies applicable to analysis, planning, and supporting availability management tasks.
• The difficulty level of the availability management tasks.

The degree to which these factors are pertinent has important ramifications. They are as follows:

• The number of interactions in the total availability task is greater.
• Some information will only become available to the decision processes as availability tasks progress.
• The degree that the availability organization is able to fully and exactly preplan or make advance decisions about its activities is limited.

Structures as strategies. Different organizational forms are actually strategic variations. They are created in response to diversity, uncertainty and the need for not-yet-available information. The availability engineering design team must understand these variations and their consequences with respect to the following organizational possibilities:

• Increasing the ability to preplan the organizational tasks.
• Decreasing the level of performance required for continued viability. This may be the result of an availability policy developed by top management. It may also reflect the capacity of availability management to influence corporate, operating company, and plant-level management to accept and expect a lesser level of performance.
  Lowered performance can mean many things besides reduced quality of availability tasks. It can include excess staffing and other resources, lower acceptable plant income, etc.
• Increasing the organization’s flexibility. This ability will counter the inability to completely preplan its activities. Meanwhile, it is still an election to achieve a high level of performance.

Information and decision requirements. Organizations can be viewed as information and decision systems. This is because information and decisions are indistinguishable from the organization’s system of core and subordinate work processes. Consequently, the nature of necessary information and decisions requirements for each organization are a primary determinant of what is an appropriate structure.

The relational issues of subsystem theory is critical to this design dimension. They define the necessary configuration of psychologies that information and decisions must effectively circulate through.

The management of availability involves many employees assigned to many activities distributed across many functions and multiple organizational levels. The result is division of labor and associated interdependence of individuals subjected to different influences and pressures. Meanwhile, frequent or direct communication between all affected individuals is often unfeasible.

The simplest solution would be to define each task in advance with rules and procedures. This reduces the need for communication between process participants. This is because each situation has been addressed proactively rather than reactively.

Unfortunately, availability management cannot completely succeed with this approach. The approach leaves no response for situations that have never appeared before or could not have been anticipated by any reasonable method and vision.

The solution is to establish additional managerial roles. Each new challenge is referred upward to a shared manager. The weakness is that each such manager is limited in terms of the information processing and decision-making he or she can effectively address.

Upward referral is much more appropriate when management progressively chooses business strategies and performance targets that are more challenging. The capacity of shared managers is quickly exhausted. With upward referral the organization will be able to respond as necessary to its chosen vision.

The next level of possible organizational strategy is to lower the decision process to the points where the work processes reside. Decisions now occur where the related information has its source. This, in turn, requires that people at these levels be additionally empowered to match this new situation.

Now there is a control problem. Management must somehow assure itself that these empowered individuals will act consistently with the overall availability mission and scheme. In other words, it must be comfortable that individuals will step beyond their focus on the specific task and instead consider the greater intention of that task.

A solution is to use goals and objectives along with rules, procedures, and an appropriate reliance on upward referral. However, the ability of individuals to function successfully within the established goals and objectives can be a challenge. This challenge reflects the degree of uncertainty inherent to the work processes and their associated goals and objectives.

If uncertainty is great, goals and objectives will have to be set and reset throughout some work processes. This requires additional decision making. The structure of upward managers must again be called upon to address new challenges. And just as before, the managers will eventually become exhausted by the demands to process information and make associated decisions.

Structural choices. The functional challenge of availability management and its maintenance operation is generally described by the characteristics outlined in the previous section. Consequently, the availability organization design team has structural choices. The first choice is to accept the above limitations and operate as a functional organization. Alternately, it can counter these limitations by adopting one or a mix of four structural strategies.

This, in turn, leads to two fundamental choices. The relation of the choices is shown in Figure 13-6. The figure shows the following set of choices:

Reducing the need for information and decision processes. In other words, simplify the challenge to one that can be more easily served. Its two structural options are lowered specification of acceptable performance, and organizational self-containment.

Increasing the organization’s capacity for information processing and decision-making. This is accepting the full challenge facing the availability organization and creating a structure that can serve its scope. Its two structural options are information systems, and work process relations across the organization.

Strategies to simplify the challenge. The first of the two fundamental choices is to reduce the information and decision processes that are needed to accomplish the organization’s task. The options are as follows:

Determine opportunities to reduce performance to an acceptable lower level. Performance is reduced in terms of the outputs, inputs, and performance parameters of a workprocess.

For example, the reduction can be applicable to resource utilization. The availability organization can respond to its challenge by increasing the human, material and other support resources. This may be 6preferable to better managing a lower level of resources while still achieving the same performance.

Create self-contained organizational units. The second strategy for reducing the amount of necessary information and decisions is to organize in self-contained work processes. The strategy reduces the diversity of input, output and throughput diversity.

As the point of decision making is moved closer to the action, a difficult problem is made simpler. It is, therefore, much more manageable.

One source of simplification is that the unit is simply unaware of the full problem at hand. This is because of the expertise that remains outside the boundaries of its members.

As management’s choices between business strategies make the overall organizational task more complex, the job of higher management also becomes more difficult. This is because its fundamental responsibility is to integrate the organization’s self-contained units. The eventual result is the overload of these managers. This, in turn, leads to a natural limit on performance.

Strategies for increasing the capacity for information and decision-making. The alternate fundamental strategic choice is to increase the capacity for information and decision processes. This is a chance to rise and meet the inherent challenge facing the organization. The options are as follows:

Develop information functions and systems. This strategy increases the capacity of existing information and decision processes, creates new processes, and introduces new approaches. It also increases the capacity to use information that evolves as the work process progresses.

There are two dimensions to this strategy:

• Information is collected at its source. It is then directly accessed at the appropriate time by those who have a need for it. These people may be in higher, lateral and lower organizational levels. The alternate approach is to direct information upward to a common manager and then downward to the user.
• The decision-making capacity of some entities may have to be increased to process the increased information. Analyses models serve this purpose.

Use cross-organization information sharing and decision-making. This strategy includes direct lateral contact, liaison, task forces, teams, integrating roles, managerial linking, matrix forms, and systems organization. Thus, cross-organization methods range from the simple, obvious and inexpensive to those that are sophisticated and costly. However, more complex, expensive forms are an addition rather than a substitute for the less demanding methods. This highlights the need to avoid “excessively” capable organization structures.

Using these cross-organization methods, the organization’s capacity to process information and make decisions is increased. This is because empowerment is increased at lower levels and between all of the functions relevant to the work process. Consequently, cross-organization participation results in holistic rather than micro decision making.

Cross-organization forms can be contrasted with self-containment. Both increase discretion at lower levels. However, the self-contained strategy is possible when there is little necessary sharing of resources and expertise across outside functions and work processes. However, cross-organization relations still allow empowerment but without the loss of interdependency.

The four strategies compared. There is a common denominator to all four strategies. It is to reduce the magnitude of necessary upward referral. This is done in two diametrically different ways.

The first two strategies reduce the diversity and task difficulty confronting the organization. In contrast, the third and fourth strategies accept the difficulty as a given. They instead create the requisite capacity for information and decision processes to confront and deal with the chaos inherent to the accepted challenge.

The first strategy—lowered performance—is the default. It evolves naturally if management does not consciously choose one or a mix of the four.

Many manufacturing plants are victims of the default decision. This can begin in its design phase if availability engineering is omitted from the project scope. For example, lowered performance may be because the plant is overdesigned. The same performance would have been possible with hard design and maintenance operations developed in an integrated availability scheme. Consequently, this omission is a choice by default to accept less profitable performance.

Alternately, simplification by omission may cause the plant to fall short of its specified availability performance. Another possibility is that the plant may not be able to adjust its operational availability to match changing markets and operating conditions. This is also to accept lesser results by default.

Application of the concept. The objective of the structural strategy concept is to assess the availability management processes and linkages with respect to information and decision flow. It is then to determine the necessary unique mixture and configuration of the strategies.

In some cases, it will be possible to accept lower performance. It will be acceptable for other functions or work processes to be structured as self-contained units. The information system strategy is available and feasible through the availability-centered data management system (AB3). It will be an integral part of the other three strategies.

Finally, the strategy for cross-organization relations is studied carefully prior to its application. This is because of its natural costliness. Therefore, this strategy is the last resort. Popular literature and its philosophies would suggest otherwise. However, wholesale application should never be advised without careful determination.

Tasks of the Deliverable for Designing the Availability Management Organization

The tasks for designing the availability organization are described in the following sections. They are presented as a flowchart in Figure 13-7. The flowchart includes sequences and iterations with tasks in parallel and previous deliverables The above discussion identified multiple requirements or design principles. Three were discussed in some depth. The following tasks will apply all of them in a design process. The final work product is a detailed organization structure.

Fig. 13–7 Tasks for designing the availability organization (ADS of Figure 13-1).

AD8.1. Establish a common direction for the availability organization. A common direction is established. It is an expression of management’s goals, objectives, strategies, vision, etc. This topic was discussed in a previous section. The requirement was first addressed in the conceptual design phase.

This task is probably the most difficult. One reason is that few people fully understand the principles and concepts of direction. Even when they do, the associated brainstorming and insights are always a challenge.

The work can be helped along by including strategists in the team. Ideally, these will be the same people who work in the owner’s corporate and operating company strategy divisions. Therefore, they will also contribute and continue the basic strategic vision that originally lead to the project..

AD8.2. Detail the work processes and linkages of availability management. The principles of total quality management advise the practice of diagramming the organization processes and their linkages to each other. This is an extremely effective practice. It is also a crucial step in the design of an effective and efficient availability organization.

The benefit goes beyond the detail it provides. The organization’s design team is driven to initially think of the organizational task instead of nonintegrating concepts such as subdivisioning, departments, and functions.

This is an important distinction. Organizations with complex challenges require many of their functions to work laterally as opposed to within the hierarchy of departmental boundaries.

Figure 13-7 shows that input to this task initially comes from earlier tasks in other deliverables. The input defines the following organizational subsystems:

• Technical materials operation (AD2.3, Chapter 11).
• Training operations (AD6.9, Chapter 12).
• Maintenance operations (AD7.1) of the previous deliverable.

Process and linkage diagrams are part of the change, improvement, and data management systems (AB2.2, Chapter 5). Preliminary diagrams were developed to the extent necessary and possible in the basic design phase. Thus, they provide initial input to this and the other defining tasks. Accordingly, Figure 13-7 shows that results of this task flow back to become the final diagrams in the change, improvement, and data systems (AB2.2, Chapter 5).

AD8.3. Categorize the importance of the organization’s processes. Organizational expert Peter Drucker recommends that the load bearing or key activities of the organization be identified. Therefore, the detailed processes are classified as critical, major, and minor.

This distinction is made by the following questions:

• In what processes is excellence immediately and persistently required to achieve the availability organization’s goals?
• In what activities or processes would the lack of efficient and effective performance ultimately undermine the capacity to achieve the goals?

Organization design focuses on the identified critical and major activities. Focus is crucial since there are always limited resources and time. The processes and linkages diagrams are used as the “menu” from which to identify them.

AD8.4. Determine the structure requirements for psychological holism. Analysis of psychological holism is required to assure that all important organizational mentalities exist and balance against each other. Thus, the analysis identifies how the flowchart processes (AD8.2) must be grouped (not grouped) to assure their integrity. It also assures that some do not assume inappropriate dominance.

AD8.5. Determine the structural strategies for the flow of information and decisions. This task is to assess the process and linkage diagrams with respect to information and decision flow. From there it is determined how the four structural strategies are most appropriate in an overall configuration. Examples are as follows:

• It may be possible to accept lower performance in some acceptable form for functions that are classified as minor.
• Other work processes will have a nature that allows them to be placed in self-contained functions.
• The vertical information strategy is made possible by the availability-centered data management system. Thus, the designers will determine which functions depend on its data and analyses elements.
• The remaining functions will be served by lateral relations. Consequently, the goal is now to determine which of the organizational methods for this strategy will be applied to relate the subject functions and work processes. The methods include direct lateral contact, liaison, task forces, teams, integrating roles, managerial linking, matrix forms, and organizational systems. The last method is to temporarily and permanently combine individuals, functions, organizational units and external organizations as a system. It is a dynamic form. Membership is determined by current requirements. Participation of each entity can be short or long-term.

This and the previous two tasks are guided by the findings of the task of establishing a common direction for the availability organization. This guidance enables the design team to make the necessary design distinction and decisions.

      AD8.6. Formulate a definitive organization structure. The previous two tasks are not yet a working diagram. They must now be converted to a classic organization chart. However, it is important to note that only now is such an instrument formulated. There is always a temptation to leap to this step. However, such a leap will most likely build into or leave fatal flaws in the final design.

      AD8.7 Formulate the detail of responsibility, ownership, and authority. Organization design will finally overlay the detail of responsibilities, ownership, and authorities on the organization chart. The subtasks are as follows (Figure 13-8):

Fig. 13–8 Subtasks for formulating responsibility, ownership, and authority (AD8.7 of Figure 13-7).

AD8.7.1. Prepare a customer, supplier, and ownership matrix. In a matrix, with the business processes as a dimension, identify the organizational participants, responsibilities, authority to make decisions, rights to veto, and ownership.

AD8.7.2. Develop department and position descriptions. Utilize the matrix to develop departmental and position job descriptions.

AD8.7.3. Determine staffing levels and training requirements. The job descriptions are extended to identify the necessary range of staffing levels and their training requirements. These details will flow to the determination of support facilities. Another task will translate the organizational detail to the facilities required to house them (AD5.3.3, Chapter 12).

Figure 13-7 shows that the results of this deliverable will iterate to the various suborganization’s availability management. These were formed as a preliminary scheme for their respective domains. They are as follows:

• Improvement, change, and data management functions (AB2.6, Chapter 5). These organizations will manage the processes associated with availability parameters, failures, modeling, and optimization. Modeling includes availability, financial, resources, and facilities.
• Maintenance instructions, procedures, and manuals functions (AD2.3, Chapter 11).
• Training organization (AD6.10, Chapter 12).
• Organization for maintenance operations (AD7.5, Chapter 13).

AD8.8. Define the information system for organization design and its elements of integrity. As suggested by the previous tasks, organization design is a substantial piece of work. The design may also be dynamic over time or the organization’s environment and derived performance changes. Therefore, it is necessary to have the ability to trace through its design. This is necessary when staff levels change; when there is a need to revise the structure; and when management changes some basic approach. An example of the last possibility is if management were to begin contracting for availability management and maintenance functions that were previously provided in-house.

Thus, an information system should be defined for that purpose. It should capture the design process and decisions and their various organization charts, job descriptions, etc.

Figure 13-7 shows that the ultimate system scheme flows to the task of defining the data and information system (AB2.5, Chapter 5). This is part of the deliverable of developing the change, improvement, and data management functions and systems.

AD8.9. Determine the cost of the total availability organization. Organizations have costs. Differing schemes have widely different cost structures. Thus, this task is concerned with the cost of organizational power. The more power, the greater cost. The analysis may cause the organization design team to try alternate schemes. For example, plant resource levels can be increased to offset less organizational power and, therefore, cost.

The analysis results will flow to the plant financial model (AB7.8, Chapter 7) as follows:

• The income statement subsystem will reflect staff levels and training.
• The balance sheet subsystem will reflect the working assets required to support staffing.
• The investment in electronic systems for maintaining integrity will flow to the balance sheet subsystem.

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