“What is the formula for determining the optimum maintenance staffing level for our plant?” someone recently asked. I have asked the very same question about optimum maintenance staffing levels for over 20 years. It’s a tough one to answer.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no logical or easy answer to this seemingly straightforward question. I’m sure there may be some readers out there who have mastered this mythical formula, or have come up with an effective method for their respective situations. Still, I feel obligated to share my own thoughts as to the difficulties associated with maintenance staffing levels as we wrestle with maintenance costs, reliability improvement and an era of skills shortages.

Plant staffing levels can be determined by a number of different methods. For example, determining the number of operators for machinery, material handling or control stations is a relatively simple task due to the number of operating positions, job tasks, narrowly focused scope of work and specific but limited skills and knowledge requirements. On the other hand, determining the number of maintenance mechanics or technicians is not so simple—in fact, in some plants it is extremely complex. I’ve heard of formulas based on headcount per installed horsepower, mechanics per replacement cost or technicians per square foot. Why don’t these work across the board? Here are the BIG variables that affect maintenance staffing level decisions:

Variable #1 – scope of work
The breadth and depth of job-performance requirements varies widely in today’s industries from extremely-narrow, single-task, repetitive job tasks to broad, multi-skill job roles. Maintenance is rarely a narrowly focused job role, either geographically in the plant or intellectually in the skills and knowledge requirements.

In general, maintenance includes very broad core job skills and knowledge such as

in-depth principles of mechanical, machine repair, electrical, instrumentation/controls, machining, etc. We also must include equipment-specific, facilityspecific task skills and knowledge. Then there are advanced trouble-shooting and problem-solving skills and knowledge. Furthermore, we cannot ignore the specialized skills and knowledge requirements for condition monitoring and predictive maintenance. In many plants I’ve often heard this scope of work scenario described as “an inch wide and a mile deep for equipment operators” and “a mile wide and a mile deep for maintenance technicians.”

Variable #2 – individual competency
The second big variable for maintenance headcount is the skill set of each person—individual competency. If...(Read whole article)