A strong maintenance culture goes a long way toward ensuring a strong company. Not only does it extend the life of your assets and protect your bottom line, but also it underscores the values, behaviors and actions that are the hallmarks of a truly professional organization.
Here’s how to go about fostering a strong and responsive maintenance culture:
Assessing the maintenance culture at your facility
It’s difficult to create a strong maintenance culture without the proper ingredients.
- Leadership commitment: From the top down, your company must demonstrate that it prioritizes maintenance. That includes dedication to maintenance staffing, training, equipment and time set aside for implementation.
- Employee engagement: Listen to employees. They should be heard when it comes to understanding issues and trends, and they should be given dedicated time for training, as well as a license to speak freely regarding concerns about materials, gear and production goals.
- Continuous improvement mindset: Improvement requires willingness. Frequently, this means looking inward — collecting data, reviewing potentially outmoded practices, finding new ways to complete old tasks or eliminating some tasks altogether.
Steps to develop a strong maintenance culture
A strong maintenance culture is guided by company values as expressed through daily actions, attitudes and practices. Here are some of the crucial elements to creating that culture:
- Leadership: This isn’t simply stated, rather it’s demonstrated by allotting sufficient resources — staff, training, equipment and time — to your maintenance program.
- Training and engagement: Expectations are one thing. Encouragement is another. Offer industrial maintenance technician training and development opportunities and make sure all employees are familiar with the maintenance required for the equipment they use — whether that means shadowing maintenance personnel or planned maintenance downtime in the regular schedule.
- Standardization: Establish clear maintenance procedures and protocols. This ensures consistent adherence to best practices.
- Continuous improvement: Feedback and suggestions for improvement should not only be welcomed, but also encouraged. Maintenance practices should be regularly reviewed and, when necessary, updated.
- Willingness to change: Change is hard. Almost everyone resists it. Taking a positive attitude toward change — making it about growing into the future rather than indicting the past — is essential.
- Resource allocation: Goals mean nothing without the means to accomplish them. Give your staff the time, the training, the gear and the manpower to get the job done.
- Consistency: Reinforce the importance of keeping up with maintenance schedules and standards, not to mention industry/agency compliance. Standard operating procedures are essential.
Benefits of a strong maintenance culture
A culture of maintenance is an asset to champion for a variety of reasons. Imbuing your company with the spirit of professionalism and pride is a great place to start. But there are more pragmatic benefits, including:
- Increased equipment reliability: Simply, well-maintained equipment breaks down less often, which means you have less downtime and more consistent productivity.
- Improved safety: Breakdowns can be dangerous. Maintenance makes employees safer. Plus, when employees are confident in the equipment, they can maximize their output.
- Cost savings: Regular repairs cost less than emergency repairs. Keeping existing machinery in good working order is cheaper than replacing neglected equipment.
- Higher productivity: Scheduled maintenance occurs during downtime or at off-peak hours. Unscheduled maintenance interrupts operations. Well-maintained equipment runs more efficiently and uses raw materials more effectively.
Role of technology in building a maintenance culture
Leveraging technology to manage your maintenance is now commonplace in industry.
A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) takes the guesswork out of your maintenance plan. CMMS automates, among other things: maintenance scheduling and record keeping; unscheduled maintenance tracking; work orders; inventory management; expense records; and auditing and compliance records. The benefits of CMMS include: increased reliability; more efficient work request processing; simplified record keeping; providing data for predictive maintenance; lower repair costs; less downtime; increased safety; off-site access; compliance documentation; and systems integration.
IoT, or the Internet of Things, is essentially the interconnection of devices and networks (for example, a thermostat and your smartphone). An array of IoT sensors on your machinery can collect and store data throughout your facility. It can alert you to less-than-optimal operation and can illuminate use and wear patterns so your maintenance resources can be deployed most effectively in a predictive and proactive fashion.
Join the culture club
Well-maintained equipment reduces the stress on both the production and maintenance staffs. Operational improvement and innovation are organic byproducts of highly functioning mechanical and human assets. A strong maintenance culture is the foundation that enables your organization to be the change you seek.
