What is MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operation)?

Maintenance-Repair-Operation Projects involve the entire gamut of activities responsible for periodical / preventive maintenance, repairs and overhauling of revenue generating assets / equipment. These practices are required in virtually every industry but in process industries the entire plant needs to be shut down for MRO for weeks at a stretch. Typical examples of industries are power, cement, sugar, distillery, etc.  Aircrafts, Helicopters, Ships maintenance is another big area under MRO. The time during which the plant or equipment is down for MRO is equivalent to loss of sale, thus loss of profit.  Companies make efforts to coincide planned / preventive MRO activities with lean season to minimize the impact on sale, however this is not always possible.

Industry Structure

MRO industry in India has been in the past dominated by small and medium enterprises with limited participation by global players. The industry does have the credibility to attract MRO work not only from India but also South East Asia, Middle East and Eastern Europe. The key issue which the government will need to address is ensuring that adequate infrastructure is made available in a timely and easy to access manner for the industry and ensure that it creates a level playing environment for Indian MROs when they compete with their global peers to attract business into the country. One of the major factors which would boost the growth of market is cost competitiveness in manpower which India offers.

Issues & Challenges

• MRO activity involves sequence of steps where in the manual element for analysis and engineering is quite high. The uncertainty element is high as in many cases the extent of work required, spares required is not clear till the equipment is opened for inspection. MRO’s are typical project with high levels of uncertainty and uniqueness each time it happens.
• MRO Projects have to balance between time, scope, quality and cost.
• The criticality to restart the equipment as fast as possible is intuitively appreciated; however the way the MRO project is managed including the extreme focus on cost means that in reality there are delays, and quality / scope compromises. Delays lead to immediate loss of throughput and compromises on quality / scope leads to future loss of throughput by way of rework, repairs, etc.
• In Complex Manufacturing Environment MRO challenges are even greater;
• Long lead times for procurement of spare parts required for MRO completion
• Long Production Lead Times;
• Poor Due Date Performance (DDP) – as generally observed in MRO projects across India
• Frequent Changes in customer requirements during the MRO activity is in the execution phase.

Our solution:

• Avenir helps companies to manage their MRO activities within time, scope, quality and cost.
• This is made possible by adopting the project management methodology promoted by Theory of Constraints – Critical Chain Project Management. The key differentiators

                   – Focus on completing the project on time not each task on time – managing / measuring the progress to complete each task on time actually jeopardizes the overall project completion on time

                  – It’s important to ask the question how much more time to complete the task (and the obstacles) rather than how much task is completed

                   – Multi-tasking is not a good thing in MRO Projects, in many cases, it is extremely detrimental and is a prime reason for project delays

• Avenir works with the client team to plan and execute MRO activities in line with CCPM principles.