Summary
The work shows a methodology that facilitates the decision-making process when deciding whether a certain activity will continue to be carried out by the company or it is more feasible to contract it to third parties. The methodology includes novel elements regarding the selection of service providers to be contracted; to work with contracts for results in order to guarantee the true availability of production facilities; treatment directly with uncertainty, risk, as not all the elements of the analysis are considered as known with certainty and the value of money over time is taken into account when making the economic valuations of the improvements.
Abstract
The work shows a methodology that facilitate the process of taking of decisions when deciding if a certain activity will continue to be carried out by the company or it is more feasible to hire it at another company. In the methodology relating novel elements are included to the selection of the suppliers of the services to hire; to the work with contracts for results with the purpose of guaranteeing the true readiness of the productive facilities; treatment in a direct way with the uncertainty, risk, when not being considered all the elements of the analysis as well-known. Otherwise, it keeps in mind the value of the money in the time when carrying out the economic valuations of the improvements.
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Introduction
Given the changing market conditions, companies require an organization flexible enough so that they can adapt quickly to new management tools, to be able to beat the price of any competitor, in an innovative way that allows them to maintain their products and services with the characteristics required by the client.
To minimize the frequency of the appearance of unavailability in the devices or their consequences, that is, to improve their CO, different measures are usually adopted in the design, construction and operation phases of the same. During the operation of a device, the most generalized measure adopted is the execution of an efficient maintenance program that tries to counteract the negative effects caused by wear processes.
There are a number of maintenance methodologies. Nowadays a new one has emerged, the outsourcing of some or all of the maintenance tasks. Outsourcing is the trend in modern administration that has allowed companies to concentrate their efforts and investments in areas that are vital to them, delegating entire areas that, although important, are not fundamental for production, to other organizations.
Now, what does outsourcing or outsourcing mean? We will try an approach to the concept by means of the following definition: systematic acquisition, total or partial, and through external suppliers, of certain goods or services necessary for the operational operation of a company, provided that they have been previously produced by the company itself or it is found in conditions to do so, and in the case of goods or services related to their activity.
Outsourcing consists of giving something to third parties instead of executing it in the company itself. In principle, outsourcing is based on the postulate that proclaims the inexistence of truly productive organizations in all their activities. Economic units must seek specialization through third parties that are capable of executing certain activities better than the company itself, so that the latter can focus on its basic mission or specific activity ("core competence"), in order to thus obtaining a better comprehensive result.
Outsourcing would appear, thus raised, as a solution to certain problems of the modern company, since there are a large number of necessary functions, but they do not add relevant value from the customer's point of view.
When deciding to transfer certain activities to true specialists, it is believed that these suppliers will contribute to improving the overall result of the company that hires them, mainly through the achievement of success in two basic aspects: quality and cost.
Such benefits will arise, theoretically, from the more efficient development of outsourced activities carried out by specialists who know much better how to manage them. This differential advantage will allow them to provide a better product (in terms of quality) and at a lower price than the cost of doing it internally.
However, often the decision to outsource is not the result of an in-depth analysis, but is often made intuitively by managers, guided by mere imitation or the "feeling" that it will do better for the company. The decision to outsource involves evaluating and judging.
Cuban companies are not oblivious to this new way of carrying out maintenance work, which is why leading-edge organizations are being increasingly tempted to use alternatives like this one.
The absence of a methodology that would allow defining which activities should be outsourced and which ones the company should carry out constitutes a scientific problem to be solved, for the solution of which it is necessary to carry out a study of current trends in the methodologies of outsourcing processes and from this design one that guarantees the necessary reliability in the operation of the productive equipment.
Proposal for the improvement of maintenance activity. Methodology for outsourcing
The proposed methodology bases its operation on the analysis of the current situation presented by the maintenance activity in the Cuban company, generally so that it is carried out with its own resources as long as the necessary resources are possessed for it and its economically feasible. realization; deciding to contract the performance of this activity in the event of failure of any of these two conditions. Figure 1 shows the proposed methodology to develop this decision-making process.
Figure 1
Next, a detailed description of the proposed methodology will be made, explaining what each of the steps it has consists of, with the aim of facilitating its understanding and understanding.
Step # 1: Gathering Information
In this step, a plant survey of the production equipment will be carried out, which will have the objective, in addition to locating within the installation the place that the equipment occupies, to determine those of greater complexity and importance for the production process. Afterwards, an analysis of the maintenance plan of each of the equipment must be carried out, in order to determine the current situation of each of them as far as this activity is concerned.
This first step is essential because with it it is possible to have a full knowledge of the situation, in terms of maintenance, of the equipment, the level of importance of the same within the production process, in addition to its technical status and necessary resources for maintenance.
Step # 2: Analysis of the availability of resources to carry out the maintenance activity in the company
In this step, an analysis of all the information previously collected is carried out based on comparing the resources (personnel, materials,…) necessary to carry out each planned maintenance activity with those available. (In a survey conducted by the magazine "Rockwell Automation and Maintenance Technology" in May 2001 on the practices of Reliability and Maintenance in companies, it found that the most common reasons that justify outsourcing are the limitation of personnel (74% of the respondents) and skill and experience limitations (58% of respondents),
This analysis must reflect whether the organization has all the necessary resources to carry out the maintenance tasks of the equipment, thus guaranteeing a higher operational availability. In the analysis, a balance must be made between the resource needs of each of the planned maintenance activities plus a reserve for contingencies and the availability of the resource being analyzed.
2. Cost of outsourcing maintenance activities (CTTerc).
This term refers to what it costs to establish a contract with another company to be in charge of performing some or all of the maintenance services to certain equipment or all the productive equipment, that is, what the selected company charges for providing the services needed. In this case, it is necessary to select the provider of the services to be contracted, for this we propose to use the following methodology:
2.1. Evaluation and selection of suppliers.
In the selection of suppliers we must bear in mind that for this we must apply two approaches:
Selection of providers for a specific service: this is used for low priority services for the company's activity.
Selection of suppliers to establish stable links for certain services: this approach is convenient when they are services that play a preponderant role in production, quality and cost. In these cases, the contracting of a supplier is carried out for medium and long terms with the aim of establishing joint plans to improve the value of the service to be performed. The selection process is proposed to be carried out through the following steps:
- Obtaining market information Training of evaluation criteria Determination of the weighting of each evaluation criterion Definition of possible suppliers Evaluation of each supplier according to each criterion Obtaining a comprehensive evaluation of each supplier Selection of the supplier.
The obtaining information market aims to characterize the various existing suppliers in the segment of service in the company, the main regularities and trends existing in terms of price, quality, innovation, financial conditions, among others are interested.
The formation of the evaluation criteria is the definition of the criteria that are specifically of interest to the company to take into account to evaluate and select the provider of a certain service. These criteria should be selected according to the technical and economic characteristics of the company's process, its strategy, the problems of the environment and the characteristics of the market for the sale of the company's final product.
The determination of the weight of each endpoint is to establish, for each of the defined criteria, what should be the weight that should be given in the valuation process for each vendor. The sum of the weighting of all the selected criteria must total 100 points.
The definition of possible suppliers is carried out on the basis of the information collected in the market and the offers received.
The evaluation of each supplier according to each criterion consists of carrying out the evaluation of each criterion to each supplier. This assessment can be made on the basis of a scale of 1 to 5 points. The value of 5 points coincides with an excellent rating and so on for the ratings of good (4), fair (3), bad (2), very bad (1). Expert panels are used to carry out the assessment.
The comprehensive assessment of each supplier is carried out by integrating the assessment made of all the criteria for each supplier. This assessment allows obtaining the total score that corresponds to each possible supplier. The total score for a supplier is obtained as follows:
In addition to the total score that corresponds to each supplier, a balance must be made of which are the main weaknesses (criteria in which the rating is fair or lower) and the main strengths (criteria in which the rating is good or excellent). This is of vital importance since in many cases in certain criteria minimum qualification parameters are set due to the role that this parameter plays in the competitiveness of the company. Obtaining a score below this limit invalidates the provider in question.
The selection of the supplier consists of determining the supplier with which the service supply relationship will be established. This selection should fall on the supplier with the highest score, although other aspects should be analyzed, such as: weaknesses and strengths of each supplier, affinity of the supplier with the company and other criteria. Even a certain company may establish that to be its supplier it must exceed a set minimum score.
Once the cost of performing the maintenance by own means has been calculated and the company that will provide the service has been selected in the event that it is hired; the decision is made, which can yield the following results:
Carry out scheduled maintenance activities with own means when the total maintenance cost is lower than the contracting cost.
Contract the services when this is more feasible for the company than to carry them out by its own means. The negative aspects (qualitative evaluation) that outsourcing can cause must be taken into account. If this decision is made, the metrics must be established through which the work of the contracted company will be measured. It is recommended to control through results, given these in terms of availability, efficiency and reliability, always establishing the expected level of service so that the contractor becomes involved as part of the company so that there is a mutual benefit of this improvement.
Step # 4: Analysis of the feasibility of acquiring the necessary resources
The objective of this step is to analyze whether it is economically more feasible for the company to acquire the necessary resources to carry out maintenance activities or to outsource their execution. To do this, the following comparison must be made:
VS Cost of Outsourcing the Mtto
After the comparison has been made, the decision will be made whether or not to acquire the necessary resources, it will be given by the following:
- The resources must be acquired if the sum of the acquisition cost and the total cost of executing the maintenance tasks is less than the cost of outsourcing the maintenance Maintenance must be outsourced if the cost of this is less than the cost of acquiring the resources with those that are not counted added to the total cost of performing maintenance tasks. It should be clarified that the acquisition cost item also includes the entire process of adapting these new resources to the context of the company; if they are qualified personnel, adapt to their new job and if specialized equipment is acquired, the improvement of the personnel who will operate it.
Step # 5: Application and follow-up
Once in step three it is decided to carry out the maintenance tasks with its own resources or that in step four it has been decided to acquire the necessary resources to carry out the scheduled maintenance activities, the completion of the planned tasks will be carried out with In order to guarantee the desired availability of the productive equipment with them and the necessary follow-up will be given in order to guarantee its timely evaluation and improvement.
Conclusions
Maintenance cannot be oblivious to the profound transformation of production processes that industrial companies are undergoing today, so its optimization is a real need for any of these companies.
The activity of deciding who is responsible for carrying out maintenance in the company requires scientific-technical rigor, otherwise it remains a good intention that can discredit it and cause problems in the subsequent development of its productive activity.
The outsourcing of maintenance tasks, properly managed, can become an important way to provide solvency to the maintenance problems faced by the organization, by seeking with it the reduction of costs and the necessary increase in the availability of productive equipment.
References
Amendola, L. (2001): Outsourcing. Industrial Engineering Management Magazine
Amendola, L. (2003): Mixed Models of Reliability ”. Editorial Datastream
“The limits of outsourcing”. MERCOSUR Magazine N ° 58 Year 2000 / March - April.
Plant Maintenace Resource Center "2001 Maintenance Task Selection Survey Results"
Dunn, S. Maintenance Outsourcing - Critical Issues.
V International Congress of Costs "Concepts and reflections on outsourcing",
Barba, S., Pomerol, J. (1997): Multicriteria Decisions. Theoretical Foundations and Practical Use. Editorial Servicios de Publicaciones, Spain
Bernal Muñoz, EA Contracting maintenance. National Maintenance Commission. ACIEM- Colombia
