Wrench Time Study of

Maintenance Contractors for US Government

Are we receiving the best value for our money?
The Problem

In private industry it is known that poorly performing commercial companies have maintenance
personnel with a wrench time of less than 25%.
World Class commercial companies typically have a wrench time above 55%.
If you increase wrench time from 25% to 50% a maintenance staff can complete double the work
required thus reducing cost and reliability problems.
Losses because of this problem are probably in the Billions of dollars per year.

Study conduct by the GAO related to this Subject: Federal Real Property: Government's

Fiscal Exposure from Repair and Maintenance Backlogs Is Unclear (GAO-09-10 October
16, 2008)

In 2007, GAO reported that real-property-holding agencies and the administration had made progress toward
managing their real property, but underlying problems, such as backlogs in repair and maintenance, still existed
and six agencies reported having over $1 billion in repair and maintenance backlogs

Potential Savings: If wrench time in just these six agencies were doubled the impact could be a cost savings
to the US Government of 20-30%, $200 300 Million per year. How many US Government Organizations have
the same problem and at what cost to the Federal Government? This money could be used to reduce the deficit or
fund priority missions.

What is a Wrench Time Study?

Wrench time has its roots from around 1910 when a concept called time-and-motion study was
designed for production assembly workers. The idea with wrench time studies for hourly maintenance
workers is to measure what percent of that worker's time is spent on actual work. Basically, someone
measures how much time is spent using tools. Travel time, job planning, getting parts, and other nonwrench time activities do not count as working time.
This approach has been used by many companies to identify the barriers which impact productive
work, we call these barriers delays. They include all non-value added time.

Page 1 of 4
www.gpallied.com

GPAllied
4360 Corporate Road
Suite 110
Charleston, SC 29405
Office (843) 414-5760
Fax (843) 414-5779

Wrench Time Study of

Maintenance Contractors for US Government
Are we receiving the best value for our money?

Figure 1 Paper Mill Wrench Time Study Results

Case Study: Identified in Figure 1 are the actual results from a Wrench Time Study.
See Actual wrench time (shown here in blue) observed using the techniques of statistical activity surveying was
found to be 24.7%. Travel and waiting time was found to account for 19% of the average mechanic's workday,
while 9.6% of his time was spent searching for, gathering and delivering materials to the job on hand.
The remainder, classified as "other", included time spent in meetings, personal needs and contractual time. This
amounted to 35.8% of the typical mechanics workday. Observe activities of maintenance forces on the job
during normal work hours. Record those snap shot observations, Analyze the results of the sampling
(recommend over 3000 observations), take appropriate action.

Act on the Results

The improvement strategy at this mill, based upon the data provided from this survey, was to improve the effort
of planning and scheduling of work, thereby reducing wasted effort by the mechanics in searching for tools,
replacement parts, drawings, information or by waiting for equipment to be shutdown and secured. Not
surprisingly it was documented during the survey that the level of wrench time during scheduled machine downs
Page 2 of 4
www.gpallied.com

GPAllied
4360 Corporate Road
Suite 110
Charleston, SC 29405
Office (843) 414-5760
Fax (843) 414-5779

Wrench Time Study of

Maintenance Contractors for US Government
Are we receiving the best value for our money?
increased dramatically. This phenomenon is a result of focused planning effort for those shutdowns. An obvious
strategy is to carry that focused planning effort over to everyday activities were planning makes sense.

Recommend Action
1. Identify 3 agencies (CENTCOM Afghanistan, IMCOM, Army Prepositioned Equipment Sites, US Navy
Shipyards, Depot Level Maintenance, etc), and conduct a wrench time study at 2 sites per agency, their
best site and their worst site.
2. Identify the maintenance budget for each site.
3. Conduct a wrench time study (unannounced) using three monitors with Wrench Time software at each
site for two weeks.
4. Analyze the results, potential cost savings to be realized, develop an short term and long term action plan
to increase wrench time.
5. Implement the short term plan at these test sites and re-evaluate wrench time in 3 months. (we want to
decrease cost soon)
6. Based on the results of the short term plan, implement the long term sustainment plan.
Paper Written by Ricky Smith CMRP

Page 3 of 4
www.gpallied.com

GPAllied
4360 Corporate Road
Suite 110
Charleston, SC 29405
Office (843) 414-5760
Fax (843) 414-5779

Wrench Time Study of

Maintenance Contractors for US Government
Are we receiving the best value for our money?

Page 4 of 4
www.gpallied.com

GPAllied
4360 Corporate Road
Suite 110
Charleston, SC 29405
Office (843) 414-5760
Fax (843) 414-5779