Proceedings of the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute
awarded the Order of the October Revolution
and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor
named after S. M. Kirov

Volume 295

1976

ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT OF THE SERVICING OF THE ELECTRICAL FACILITIES OF A METALLURGICAL ENTERPRISE

B. I. Kudrin

(Presented by the scientific seminar of the Department of Electrical Systems and Networks)

The principal task in the area of increasing the efficiency of social production and labor productivity is the acceleration of scientific and technological progress, the raising of the technical level and improvement of product quality, the intensification, concentration, and specialization of production, and the improvement of its management.

In ferrous metallurgy, one of the factors restraining the rate of growth of labor productivity has been shortcomings in the organization of repair work. The number of repair personnel in ferrous metallurgy from 1960 to 1970 increased almost twofold [1]. Particularly rapidly, in comparison with other subdivisions, the number of workers in electrical services is increasing, which is a consequence of the quantitatively increasing and qualitatively increasingly complex variety of electrotechnical equipment installed at metallurgical enterprises. The number of electric machines at metallurgical enterprises, which determines the electrical-repair base, is growing rapidly and by 1970 had reached 1.1 million units with an average power of 30 kW. The overall electrical equipment of labor in ferrous metallurgy in 1940–1965 increased by 342.2%. Over the preceding five-year period the increase amounted to 32%. During the five-year period (1971–1975), electricity consumption increased by 50% and exceeded 90 thousand kWh per year per worker [2].

The indicated trends are also characteristic of Siberian metallurgical plants: the electrical equipment of labor at the West Siberian Metallurgical Plant reached 84,200 kWh, and the number of electric machines was 34,500 with an average power of 28.6 kW; at the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Combine these indicators were respectively 43,100 kWh, 24,700, and 27.4 kW; at the Novosibirsk Metallurgical Plant, 47,600 kWh, 7,200 units, and 29.6 kW (1973).

The electrical facilities of metallurgical plants (Table 1) are formed by a large number of interconnected and interacting elements and should be regarded as a complex (large) system whose purpose is to ensure the viability of the system—the metallurgical enterprise. (This article does not consider the diversity of aspects of the concepts “system” and “systems research” set forth in [3, 4], nor the questions of formation and the probabilistic-statistical characteristics that ensure the reliability of the system—the electrical facilities.)

If, by maintenance of the electrical facilities, one understands the process of satisfying the demands and needs that arise in the functioning of the system, i.e., the entire “complex of organizational and technical measures for care, supervision, servicing, repair, and modernization of electrical equipment” [5], then the most important task in resolving questions of organization and management of maintenance at the design stage is to determine the number of personnel, with their subsequent assignment to workplaces, and to design the corresponding material and technical base.

When considering questions of repair organization, one should agree with the view that, despite the great costs, abandoning repair—proposals of this kind can sometimes be heard—is unrealistic under present-day conditions [6]. As applied to electrical repair at Siberian metallurgical plants for the next 10–15 years, this means the necessity of repairing practically all electrical equipment.

The existing system for managing electrical facilities is based on the fact that part of the personnel of the electrical services is administratively subordinate to the chief electrician’s service: the electrical repair shop; the networks and substations shop; the central electrical engineering laboratory; the instrumentation and automation shop; and the technological dispatching shop. Over shop electricians, the chief electrician’s service exercises only a certain degree of technical supervision, without determining the day-to-day workload of the personnel.

The established method for determining the number of servicing electrical-engineering personnel by any of the widely known methods presupposes the existence of an inventory (list) of electrical equipment compiled in accordance with the system of scheduled preventive repair in force in the industry.

This existing unambiguous determinism presupposes rigid causal relations. For each particular unit of electrical equipment there are labor-intensity standards, defined for current, medium, and capital repair [5] and detailed depending on the content of the work [7]. With a standardized structure of repair cycles, the duration of inter-repair periods and repair cycles [5], the total labor input of maintenance is unambiguously determined by the expression

\[ T=\sum_{q=1}^{n}\sum_{i=1}^{k}\sum_{j=1}^{m} t, \tag{1} \]

where \(t\) is the labor intensity of the \(j\)-th (\(j=1, 2, \ldots, m\)) type of work for the \(i\)-th (\(i=1, 2, \ldots, k\)) group of electrical equipment when performing the \(q\)-th (\(q=1, 2, \ldots, n\)) type of maintenance.

Expression (1), reflecting the “orthodox Newtonian point of view” (N. Wiener), presupposes a linear dependence of the number of personnel on the quantity of electrical equipment and has limited applicability. Among the shortcomings of expression (1), arising from the fact that the features characteristic of complex systems are not taken into account, we shall note several.

Large dimensions in terms of the number of elements and the variety of size types make it practically impossible to present, in the form of a list, all the electrical equipment subject to maintenance. Individual elements are replaced by others, while the total number of elements continuously increases; the time required to create the system stretches over several years. Failure of an element is statistical in character and probably depends on

depends on the quality of manufacture and operating conditions (actual environmental conditions and load regimes), i.e., on statistically distributed external influences. The influence on the system under consideration from the higher level of the hierarchy is also statistical in nature; this higher level takes into account the competitive character of the subsystems forming the “plant as a whole” system, and constraints (on costs, staffing levels, etc.). Finally, the dependence between the nature of the equipment entering repair and the productivity of an individual workplace, the number of workplaces, and the success of servicing is probabilistic in nature and is described in terms of queuing theory.

A number of propositions put forward by the author, and used in the design of metallurgical plants in Siberia, were taken as the basis for organizing and managing the maintenance of electrical facilities and for calculating the number of electrical-engineering personnel. These propositions were based on the following statistically confirmed premises.

1) The electrical facilities as a whole can be characterized by the principal electrical indicators: the half-hour maximum load, electric power consumption (the number of hours of utilization of the maximum load), the demand factor, the number of installed electric motors and their average power (see Table 1), as well as the electrical equipment-to-labor ratio and the number of electrical-engineering personnel.

Table 1

Aggregated data on the composition of electrical equipment at the largest metallurgical enterprises

2) The quantity of installed electrical equipment is increasing and becoming qualitatively more complex. The principal electrical indicators are forecast over time. Between the principal technological indicators (production of pig iron, steel, rolled products) and the electrical indicators (electric power consumption, number of installed electric machines) there exist-

there will be a close correlational relationship; between individual electrical indicators the relationship is close to functional [8]. These relationships are characteristic of individual enterprises (we have verified this for all metallurgical enterprises of Siberia). The data of Table 1 show the considerable scatter of individual indicators and the inapplicability of averages for engineering calculations. Even singling out groups of similar plants (for example, Novolipetsk, Cherepovets, West Siberian) makes it possible to establish a tendency, but not quantitative characteristics.

The number of electrical-engineering personnel at enterprises as a whole is large and continues to grow; without carrying out the corresponding organizational and technical measures (while preserving or increasing the viability of the system—the electrical facilities), this number cannot be reduced.

The level of intra-plant centralization (the ratio of the number of personnel in the electrical-repair shops, networks and substations, TSETL to the total number of electrical-service personnel) at ferrous-metallurgy plants is low and, for example, is 16.9% for Magnitogorsk; 21% for Cherepovets; 18.1% for Chelyabinsk; 26.6% for Kuznetsk; 27.0% for West Siberian. The increase in the amount of installed equipment and the number of personnel in the chief electrician’s departments are not correlated. Thus, over the past 20 years at the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Combine the number of electric motors increased almost 4.5-fold, the number of workers in the electrical-repair shop by 1.1 times; electricity consumption doubled, and the number of workers in the networks and substations shop did not change. At the Novosibirsk Metallurgical Plant, in 1973 the number of electrical machines was 119% (1966 = 100%), the number of workers in the electrical-repair shop 100.1%; electricity consumption 116%, and the substations section 97%. At the West Siberian Metallurgical Plant over five years (1969–1973) electricity consumption increased by 76%, the number of installed electric motors by 39%, while the number of workers in the electrical-repair shop did not increase.

Consequently, an increase in the amount of installed electrical equipment does not entail an increase in the number of personnel in the chief electrician’s departments. The main reasons for this are: 1) growth in the labor productivity of electrical-engineering personnel; 2) an increase in the interrepair period, including due to the general tendency toward a decrease in the loading of electrical equipment (a decrease in the demand factor); 3) an increase in the number of electricians in shops that take over maintenance; 4) abandonment of part of the repairs, an increase in the stock of reserve machines, the appearance of “hidden” reserves, and “planning” of queues. The last two reasons lead to actual decentralization.

In specifying the position on specialization and centralization of maintenance of the electrical facilities of industrial enterprises, we note the widely held point of view on the need to build specialized plants [9], which would serve a district and repair certain standard sizes.

Without analyzing the reasons for the higher cost of electrical repair at metallurgical enterprises, we note that the electrical-repair shop (the networks and substations shop—the corresponding equipment) is obliged to repair all electric motors, whereas an electrical-repair plant accepts motors with “minor” damage; the plant is less limited by deadlines and can select motors of close standard sizes for organizing a series, while the shop often performs “rush” work; the plant mainly produces series AO, and the average power of the repaired electric motors at

at the level of several kW; a shop repairs 40–50% of the incoming standard sizes one item per year, and the average capacity is an order of magnitude higher. The number of installed electrical machines at metallurgical enterprises (Novokuznetsk, Guryevsk, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Petrovsk-Zabaikalsky) exceeds that installed at other enterprises of the region and determines the electrical-repair base. Thus, for large metallurgical enterprises, such as the West Siberian Metallurgical Plant, and remote Siberian metallurgical plants (Petrovsk-Zabaikalsky, “Amurstal”), the question of repairs at specialized plants or under contracts is at present premature. For these plants a centralized electrical-repair shop is needed which, together with the networks and substations shop and the Central Electrotechnical Laboratory, carries out operation and repair of all electrical equipment throughout the plant. Such an electrical-repair shop, scientifically justified and built in good time, can subsequently be separated into a centralized electrical-repair enterprise of the industry.

On the basis of the premises set forth, we have proposed the following: 1) an overall determination of electrotechnical personnel for the enterprise as a whole; 2) transformation of the chief electrician’s service into an independent one; 3) a change in the structure of management of the electrical facilities, including the creation of a subdivision for operational repair of electrical equipment; 4) determination of the number of electrotechnical personnel by production shops as a percentage of the total number, taking into account the specific weight of the electrical equipment and the importance of the shop; 5) determination of the staffing of the electrical-repair shop, the networks and substations shop, and the central electrotechnical laboratory according to the physical volumes of work (all major and medium repairs, electrical-installation work, manufacture of spare parts), determining the coefficient of centralization.

The number of electrotechnical personnel is determined as a whole for the enterprise with the aid of the basic criteria [10]

\[ N = k_1 k_2 k_3 n^c, \tag{2} \]

where \(n\) is the number of installed electrical machines; \(k_1\) is a coefficient taking into account the value of the average capacity; \(k_2\) is a coefficient taking into account the growth of labor productivity for the moment for which \(N\) is determined; \(k_3, c\) are constants determining the relative reduction in the number of personnel as \(n\) increases (these constants must be standardized for the industry).

The total number of electrotechnical personnel determined by expression (2) is checked by comparing data on the labor productivity of electrotechnical personnel, which we define as the ratio of the enterprise’s electrical consumption \(A\) to the entire number of electrotechnical personnel, GWh/person.

\[ P = \frac{A}{N} \tag{3} \]

and which amounted (1970–1972) for metallurgical enterprises to: Novolipetsk—0.92; Magnitogorsk—1.10; Cherepovets—0.86; Kuznetsk—1.30; “Kawasaki Steel” (Japan)—1.18 (1968). The VNIIOTchermet forecast for the industry at the 1980 level is 1.56; our forecast for the West Siberian plant is 1.65. Productivity can also be estimated by the number of personnel per 1 MW of installed ...

installed capacity [11], which is more convenient for power plants. The headcount determined by expression (2) must be checked against the total number of employees at the enterprise, which for the enterprises under consideration is at the level of 11%.

Verification of the number of installed electric motors (a forecast for the future) is carried out in the following ways: 1) according to the prospective electricity consumption of the enterprise; 2) over time as a statistical series for the given enterprise; 3) using regression analysis with identification of the leading parameter (as a rule, steel); 4) by comparing the main electrical indicators with the indicators of the largest metallurgical enterprises (similar in technology and time of construction) (Table 1), using the dependence \(n=f(P_{\mathrm{m}})\), where \(P_{\mathrm{m}}\) is the half-hour maximum load of the enterprise.

The necessity of separating the service of the chief electrician from the service of the chief power engineer and transforming it into an independent unit is dictated by the change in the ratio, by cost of structures, and in the quantitative and qualitative composition of equipment and personnel (at the West Siberian Metallurgical Plant the number of electrical-service personnel is 1.95 times greater than the number of power-service personnel—excluding the TPP, always an independent unit). The manifestation of this tendency in production shops is the position of assistant shop manager for electrical equipment (as a rule, there is no analogous position for power equipment); at three Siberian metallurgical plants the chief power engineer is an electrical engineer by education, while at the fourth—the West Siberian—the service of the chief electrician has in fact been separated.

The proposed organizational form for servicing the electrical facilities is as follows.

All electrical-engineering personnel are assigned to the service of the chief electrician. In the shops there remains a small part of the duty personnel, who, together with the technologists, must carry out preventive inspections and repairs, know the shop’s electrical equipment, and call out emergency mobile crews in a timely manner. These crews perform scheduled current repairs and install and replace electrical equipment that is to be sent for major and medium repairs. The size and composition of the crews are determined by methods of mass-service theory. It is obligatory to equip the crews with the appropriate transport, means of mechanization, and laboratory equipment.

A kind of centralized “first-aid” service is created—an operational-repair department (a shop for the repair of electrical equipment of metallurgical shops), possessing its own building (premises) and the appropriate technological equipment and having operational-production crews, which are territorially located in the corresponding production areas or in large shops (as applied to the West Siberian plant, such crews—“clusters”—are provided for the coke-chemical, agglomeration-lime, blast-furnace and hardware production areas; the medium-section, bar, blooming, sheet, converter, and electric-steelmaking shops; groups of repair shops and power facilities—12 in all). The crews must be equipped with various means of mechanization for hoisting-and-transport and labor-intensive operations, vacuum-cleaning devices; have well-equipped workshops and laboratories; and have premises for welfare services calculated for the personnel involved. These requirements are analogous to those set forth in the review [11].

The number of personnel for the electrical-repair shop is determined with the aid of the basic and auxiliary criteria [10], according to the labor input required to perform capital and medium repairs of electrical machines, and according to the amount of additional expenditures for repair of low-voltage apparatus, electrical-installation work, and manufacture of spare parts:

\[ T = k_1 k_4 n \left(aT_k + bT_c\right), \tag{4} \]

where \(T_k, T_c\) are the standard time for repair of a conventional unit (a medium-power machine), respectively for capital and medium repairs; \(k_4\) is a coefficient taking into account the amount of additional labor expenditures; \(a, b\) are the numbers of electric motors going, respectively, into capital and medium repair.

The number of personnel in the networks and substations shop is determined by the labor input

\[ T = k_4 n_t \left(m_t T_t + m_v k_5 T_v + m_l k_6 T_l\right), \tag{5} \]

where \(n_t\) is the number of transformers of sizes I–III with an average rating of 1000 kVA; \(T_t, T_v, T_l\) are the standard times for repair, respectively, of a conventional transformer, circuit breaker, and line; \(m_t, m_v, m_l\) are the percentages going into repair relative to the installed quantity; \(k_5\) is the number of high-voltage cells per transformer; \(k_6\) is the length of lines per transformer.

It should be noted that the dependences

\[ n_v = f(n_t);\quad n_l = v(n_t) \tag{6} \]

have a stable character for an enterprise over time, and processing of statistical materials for the West Siberian, Cherepovets, Novolipetsk, and other metallurgical plants confirmed this. The averages for the group of plants (Table 1), although they indicated the presence of a correlation dependence, did so with insufficient reliability.

It is proposed to significantly increase the role and importance of the central electrical-engineering laboratory, making it an independent unit, the “brain” center of the plant’s electrical-engineering services. The proposed centralization will make it possible to assign to the central electrical-engineering laboratory all work connected with carrying out inspection, adjustment, testing, and modernization; calculations, systematization, and processing of statistical materials connected with development of the plants’ electrical facilities. It will become possible to deepen specialization in the central electrical-engineering laboratory by separating individual laboratories and creating new ones. All this will be achieved by transferring functions currently performed by the electrical-engineering personnel of the production shops and by reducing the number of this personnel.

The number of personnel of the central electrical-engineering laboratory depends on many factors:

\[ N_{\text{central electrical-engineering laboratory}} = f(n, n_t, n_v, n_l, T_k, T_t, T_v, T_l, k_4, k_t), \tag{7} \]

where \(k_t\) is a coefficient characterizing the technical level of the plant. Approximate calculations carried out for the West Siberian Metallurgical Plant showed that, with the number of installed electrical machines of average power 40 kW at the plant at the level of 40,000, the staff of the central electrical-engineering laboratory should be 90 persons; 60,000 — 130 persons; 80,000 — 160 persons; 120,000 — 210 persons.

The calculations performed determine the coefficient of centralization of maintenance (repair) of electrical equipment

\[ k_{\mathrm{c}}=\frac{N_{\mathrm{erc}}+N_{\mathrm{isp}}+N_{\mathrm{iztl}}}{N}, \tag{3} \]

which, for the West Siberian Metallurgical Plant, was 27%, and after the implementation of the proposed organizational and technical measures will reach 56% (taking into account the personnel of the shop for the repair of metallurgical electrical equipment—the operative-repair department).

The next stage is to determine the number of electrotechnical personnel in production shops (Table 2), which at present is calculated from what has been achieved or by comparison with analogues. When considering the number of electrotechnical personnel in production shops as an integral complex of interrelated groups, the numerical ratios were determined by us on the basis of expert assessments by 30 specialists (shop managers, assistants for electrical equipment, chief specialists), and the results are summarized in Table 2 (column 2).

The table was compiled for a metallurgical plant with an expected half-hour maximum load at the level of 1000 MW, electricity consumption at the level of 7000 GWh, and 120,000 installed electrical machines with an average power of 40 kW.

It should be noted that probabilistic-statistical methods for determining the number of personnel by shops are lacking because of the difficulties of collecting and comparing materials. The direct calculation methods we carried out according to the installed quantity of electrical equipment, using the recommendations of the system of planned preventive repair operating in the industry [5], gave considerably overstated results for the number of required maintenance personnel. Similar results are described in [12].

On the basis of the accepted percentage, the number of electrotechnical personnel by shops was determined (column 3). The number of personnel transferred to the operative-repair department amounted to 21–35% of the total number of electrotechnical personnel in the shop and 70% of the existing number of electrical repair workers (column 6).

Such is the general approach to the organization and management of the electrical services of metallurgical enterprises and the methodology for determining the number of electrotechnical personnel as a single whole.

The proposed organizational form presupposes a kind of return to the practice of the 1930s, when the electrician was responsible for all the plant’s electrical equipment. The expansion of the functional scheme for managing the electrical services, carried out by the chief electrician through the inclusion of operative maintenance and scheduled current repair (in addition to the existing functions—operative management of power supply, monitoring and accounting, material and technical supply, capital and medium repairs, safety engineering and supervision), will require a certain psychological restructuring, the solution of a number of issues of material incentives (remuneration when the designation “primary” changes to “non-primary” changes, as do the retirement age, additional payments, etc.), and the introduction of computing machines (the creation of the “Electro” and “Electrical Repair” subsystems of the automated control system).

The creation of a centralized system for servicing the electrical services will make it possible to solve the following technical tasks: to pursue a unified technical policy; to maneuver operationally with the workforce-

Table 2

Distribution of the number of electrical-engineering personnel
at a metallurgical enterprise

…to ensure a more even year-round workload of personnel and especially of specialized groups and highly qualified staff; to use technological equipment and laboratory equipment more rationally; to improve the quality of servicing; to reduce the downtime of the main equipment during repair; to reduce the cost of repairs; to introduce network planning while observing the necessary hierarchy; to create a unified information-technical

and the design group. From the reserve electrical equipment available in the shops, in this case a centralized exchange stock can be created, in composition and quantity ensuring replacement of any failed unit of electrical equipment, as well as a transition to scheduled replacements. The creation of an exchange stock, in turn, will make it possible to move to major and medium repairs in batches, i.e., to serial production.

Conclusions

1. In resolving questions of the organization and management of maintenance of the electrical facilities, one should apply the proposition that the electrical facilities constitute a set of elements, forming a definite whole, with probabilistic-statistical relations and links among them.

2. The existing system of management of the electrical facilities and the methods for determining the number of electrical-engineering personnel are based on unambiguous determinism and do not take into account the specific features of large systems.

3. The electrical facilities of an industrial enterprise can be described by indicators that are objective in character, stable for the given enterprise, and predictable over time.

4. The existing structure of the organization and management of the electrical facilities and the contradictoriness of the local goals of individual systems and subsystems impede the centralization and specialization of maintenance and require the construction of a structure (the implementation of organizational and technical measures) that corresponds to the goal—increasing the efficiency of social production—and takes into account the environment, the state, and the behavior of the system.

5. The absence of a systems approach in determining the number of electrical-engineering personnel has led to a mismatch between the amount of installed electrical equipment at the enterprise as a whole and the number of personnel in the specialized services of the chief electrician.

6. It is proposed that the total number of electrical-engineering personnel (all electricians) be determined for the enterprise as a whole according to the number of installed electrical machines and their average power, taking into account the relative reduction in personnel numbers as the number of electrical machines increases.

7. It is proposed that the personnel numbers of the specialized services of the chief electrician (the electrical-repair shop, the shop for repair of metallurgical electrical equipment, the networks and substations shop, the central electrical-engineering laboratory) be determined according to the physical volumes of work.

8. The number of electrical-engineering personnel in the production shops is determined after calculating the centralization coefficient according to the percentage ratio, taking into account the shop’s purpose and the amount of electrical equipment installed in it.

LITERATURE

1. Tits Yu. V., Plakhtin V. D. Increasing the efficiency of the equipment service of metallurgical enterprises.—Metallurg, 1971, No. 11.

2. Egorichev A. P. Experience in centralizing repairs of power equipment at ferrous-metallurgy enterprises.—Promyshlennaya energetika, 1973, No. 10.

1. Studies in the General Theory of Systems. Moscow, “Progress,” 1969.

2. Systems Research. Yearbook 1972. Moscow, “Nauka,” 1972.

3. Regulations on Scheduled Preventive Repair of Electrical Equipment at Enterprises of the System of the Ministry of Ferrous Metallurgy of the USSR. Ministry of Ferrous Metallurgy of the USSR, Moscow, 1970.

4. Kostin L. Labor Productivity and Scientific and Technological Progress.—Kommunist, 1973, No. 17.

5. Standard Time Norms for the Repair of Electric Motors with Power up to 100 kW, Power Transformers with Capacity up to 1000 kVA, Welding Generators and Transformers. Research Institute of Labor, Moscow, 1972.

6. Kudrin B. I., Krupenin B. F., Sobolev V. V. On the Correlation Relationship between the Main Technological and Electrical Indicators of a Metallurgical Plant.—In: Electrification of Metallurgical Enterprises of Siberia. Tomsk, TSU Publishing House, 1971.

7. Surkova S. N. The Efficiency of Centralized Repair of Electric Motors with Power up to 100 kW at Enterprises of the City of Kharkov.—Promyshlennaya energetika, 1973, No. 10.

8. Astratov R. G., Kudrin B. I. On the Design of Electrical-Repair Facilities at Metallurgical Plants.—Promyshlennaya energetika, 1972, No. 3.

9. Urintsev Ya. S. Certain Questions of Organization and Technical-Economic Indicators of Repair Maintenance at Foreign Power Stations.—Energohozyaystvo za rubezhom, 1973, No. 5.

10. Gusakov B. I., Vlasov L. A. Planning the Number of Workers at the “Kamkabel” Plant.—Elektrotekhnicheskaya promyshlennost, series “Cable Engineering,” issue 12 (106), 1973.