Maintenance

Maintenance at its worst is considered as a cost centre, subservient to production, and not at all a full-fledged partner in asset management. In reality many production company’s could really perform better i.e. have considerable potential to develop maintenance into a value generator. Which it should be.

In these settings production increases availability to the max, forcing maintenance into a firefighting mode. Going hand in hand with maintenance being an easy target for cost cuttings, since that’s where you’ll find them. The plant ages progressively, availability potentially dropping further, the OEE only to be met because of the operators’ and technicians’ knowhow and experience. Until even they can’t fix it anymore. To the longtime awareness of the management, but what to do once this handling of maintenance developed through the years.

A gloomy perspective. Difficult however possible to escape from. Challenges to be met are as follows:

• Develop a vision, mission and program towards future effective asset management, backed by all stakeholders involved, including production, engineering, maintenance; making sure the future maintenance management is clearly positioned;
• Agree on a business case, identifying the as-is and desired-to-be, especially in terms of impact, culture and maturity. And facilitated by a change-management program;
• Develop processes, management systems, roles and responsibilities;
• Develop reliable data and define the maturity related KPI’s to enable transparency regarding the trend and facts of development in terms of the business case, impact and resulting value generation. To be able to manage, steer and adjust;
• Check, define and implement legal compliancy, and standards such as ISO and ESG;
• Facilitate training, working with methodologies, development of competences, skills and knowhow. Work on attitude;
• Implement EAM software (‘enterprise asset management’, formerly CMMS), supporting spare part, field service, reliability and risk based maintenance management. Enabling AI and connecting to HR, safety, security;
• Last but not least an RCM tree-structure assuring all necessary data.

And leave no doubt that this change, future development and business case is to be taken serious. Too often a too careful approach results in vague, unclear objectives and expectations, and a lacking sense of urgency. Resulting in ‘it will blow over’.

What subsequently will happen is the gradual development of committed roles & responsibilities, change of attitude, reliable data, correct spare parts, risk and root cause analyses, preventive maintenance, and a reliability mindset. Resulting in a developing maturity, a higher and more predictive availability, generating budget to further professionalize, attract and retain talent. Being partner in asset management.

We at PDM are skilled and experienced in supporting the Leadership in developing maintenance into this value creator. Single and multi-site. From the perspective of maintenance and of change management knowhow. Developed during the past 50 years.