THE MAINTENANCE CAPACITY LAB
Where did the week go?
Your crew was busy. Make the hours visible. Find one thing to change.
Your week, in hours
An illustrative week, not an industry average. Enter your own hours or use the walkaround worksheet.
Waiting & friction60 h
Count each hour once. Record active work separately from waiting; supporting work and paid leave belong in their own categories.
All accounted for?
Busy is a feeling. This is where the hours actually went. Select a category to take a closer look.
Planned + unplanned
A place to investigate
Find out before judging
THINK YOUR PLANT IS DIFFERENT?
Good. Go find out.
Take a worksheet. Follow a crew through a normal shift. Write down what held the work up, how long it lasted, and how many people it affected.
Measure the system that supports the crew. Give every delay a cause.
FROM RAY & CARL’S WHITEBOARD · CHAPTER 02
The number that changed
the conversation.
In Fix the System, Ray and Carl identify 19 sources of lost time. Their top six system changes add up to an estimated 36 hours a week across two crews.
Use the same sequence here: observe the cause, estimate its frequency, and decide which system to fix first.
Chapter 2: Loss List & System Priority Worksheet ↗A PUBLISHED STARTING POINT
How much of a shift
reaches the work?
Doc Palmer describes roughly 35% direct work as typical and 55% with effective planning and scheduling. This is a practitioner reference, not a measured average for your plant.
Doc Palmer · Plant Services · January 2025 ↗Explore the 35% → 55% reference
360 available shift hours × 20 percentage points = 72 h / week, or 3,456 h across 48 weeks.
Available shift hours = your paid total minus unavailable time. Percentages are editable; this reference does not replace your actual delay inputs.The remaining time includes necessary travel, setup, assignments, and breaks. It cannot all be counted as recoverable delay. The tile-board example is illustrative, not a literature average.
Example week loaded. Replace the hours with your own.