The Postal Service is in the process of instituting a new philosophy toward equipment maintenance. ABC maintenance philosophy is openly intended to reduce the number of work hours required to keep equipment in optimal condition by reducing the frequency of preventative maintenance route performance. Simply put, daily maintenance as we now know it is potentially to be performed as little as 2 times a week.

The Postal Service is leaving it up to Local Maintenance Management to document the run hours of equipment upon which this system is based. Needless to say, there will be great variances in how the system is instituted. We all know that there is maintenance management out there that does not have a great command of staffing requirements, otherwise there would not be such a preponderance of staffing grievances.

This being the case, there are a few things we should all be aware of. We must all be diligent in reading routes and performing the work as written. It is all too easy to get familiar with a piece of equipment and forget to bring the route book along. The MMO's which dictate national routes are changing at a breakneck pace. The APWU is challenging many of them. It is important to keep in mind that all preventative maintenance routes are "estimated time" and as such, each employee should reflect the actual time used in performance of the route.

The most important aspect of each route is what to do if work is needed that is not on the route. There are a great number of steps and functions not on the new routes, which were in previous versions and have now been deleted or replaced with an inspection function. If there is additional work needed, or an inspection function uncovers needed work, initiate a work order. It is very important to note that the ET-9 and MPE 7 initiate work orders.

The MM-5 completes and initiates work records, not work orders. There are specific guidelines for work that is needed that is not addressed in a preventative maintenance check list (see MMO-149-98). Do not use standing work orders for work performed as a result of a PM or that exceeds 18 minutes (0.3 hrs). Use of the appropriate work code is paramount to properly documenting how equipment performance is being affected by route performance, equipment age, and maintenance time. Saying that maintenance is planned (work code 07) when in fact it is a breakdown (work code 08) or non-impact breakdown (work code 23) is significant. There is also work code 5 for problems identified during preventative maintenance that does not meet the other work codes.

The other important factor is Operational Maintenance. This is probably the most misused term in maintenance. Operational Maintenance is broken into 3 categories, the first of which is work code 9. Work code 9 is monitoring overall condition. If a minor repair (0.3 hrs or less) is needed, work code 21 is appropriate. If a repair takes more time than 0.3 hrs, then work code 8 or 23 is appropriate.

Proper use of work orders (as listed in MMO-149-98) and an accurate accounting of run hours are the cornerstones to staffing a facility in the days of ABC. Help yourself and your Union by reading and performing all routes as written and initiating work orders as needed.