At any moment, the maintenance team in a busy manufacturing plant has a long list of things requiring their attention. Beyond these immediate needs, they must also work on preventive maintenance activities, manage parts inventories, work with outside contractors and ensure everyone follows safe working practices. Coordinating all this and making sure everything happens as needed is the job of the Maintenance Coordinator.
Every plant with building and equipment maintenance requirements needs someone in this role. In a small organization the supervisor may act as coordinator. In larger operations the roles are separate. This blog explains what a Maintenance Coordinator does and lists the qualities needed to be successful in the role.
What is a Maintenance Coordinator?
Maintenance technicians perform scheduled and unscheduled work on machinery and equipment in a manufacturing plant. The Maintenance Coordinator organizes and coordinates their work. This means evaluating and balancing competing requests and priorities in a way that supports production while ensuring essential preventive maintenance work is carried out.
Organizations set up the role in various ways, but other aspects often include replacement parts purchasing and inventory management, coordinating the work of external contractors and supporting safe working practices. The Coordinator also works with the computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) to ensure record accuracy and to review and analyze data.
Key roles of a Maintenance Coordinator
To take a deeper dive into the Maintenance Coordinator role, the three primary activities are:
- Planning and scheduling: The Maintenance Coordinator works with production departments to arrange when both preventive and corrective work will be done. If external contractors are needed, the Coordinator liaises with them too. (A large plant may separate out preventive and corrective work and employ a dedicated planned maintenance coordinator for PM work.)
- Resource allocation: Understanding both the type of work needed for each work order and the skills of the maintenance team, the Coordinator decides who gets allocated each job. In the same way, specialized tools and equipment will be assigned to work orders as needed. In case of an overload or when a job needs skills the team doesn’t have, the coordinator will obtain these from outside.
- Work order management: Work orders may be generated automatically by the CMMS as determined by preventive maintenance schedules. Other work, particularly breakdown repairs, comes to the coordinator as requests and the coordinator then determines the urgency, raises an order and assigns it to a member of the maintenance team.
Responsibilities of a Maintenance Coordinator
Maintenance is a complex activity in a large plant where manufacturing depends on equipment being available when needed. Typically, Maintenance Coordinator duties and responsibilities include:
- Preventive maintenance: Review OEM recommendations and machine data to establish PM routines and set these up in the CMMS. Monitor breakdown and repair statistics to determine PM effectiveness, and make adjustments accordingly. (On very large sites these responsibilities might be assigned to a separate preventive maintenance coordinator.)
- Inventory management: Ensure high usage and long leadtime replacement parts are available as needed. Form relationships with suppliers so parts can be available at short notice without being held as inventory. Review recommended spares lists for new equipment and dispose of obsolete inventory for machines no longer used or on-site.
- Vendor coordination: For specialized services a business will often contract with expert providers. HVAC maintenance, energy surveys and machine balancing are just a few examples. The Maintenance Coordinator works with these vendors, procuring, scheduling and overseeing their work as needed.
- Documentation and reporting: Ensure timely and accurate data collection and entry, and review records for improvement opportunities and to generate reports as needed.
Skills and qualifications
Success in a maintenance coordinator position requires a broad mix of knowledge and abilities. The top four requirements can be summarized as:
- Technical knowledge: The coordinator needs an understanding of the working principles of the machinery in the plant. This includes electrical and controls knowledge as well as hydraulics, pneumatics and mechanics. They should also be familiar with the types of maintenance work carried out on the machinery.
- Organizational skills: This is not a role where the jobholder has the luxury of being able to focus on one problem at a time. Competing demands are part of the job, and success requires an ability to juggle multiple challenges, prioritize and plan future activities.
- Communication skills: A big part of the job is communicating with production supervisors, vendors, manufacturing engineers and maintenance technicians. An open and honest attitude is important, as is the ability to share bad news, provide feedback and listen attentively.
- Problem-solving abilities: In preparing and assigning work orders it helps to have some ability to diagnose a problem; the person reporting it may not fully understand what’s happening or what they are seeing. Technicians will also appreciate having someone to discuss a problem with, especially if they can talk through some diagnostic tests or approaches.
Get help with improving maintenance effectiveness
This blog has described one of the pivotal roles within the maintenance function of a manufacturing plant. Maintenance Coordinator job duties range from planning future work to dealing with production emergencies, and from assigning and overseeing work to procuring parts and liaising with vendors. It’s a job that needs both technical and communication skills, the ability to manage competing requirements and, ideally, a lot of plant knowledge.
Successful Maintenance Coordinators contribute to the success of manufacturing organization by keeping equipment running and OEE high. This is done through both corrective and preventive maintenance, which the coordinator is responsible for planning and assigning.
If your plant struggles to stay on top of the maintenance workload, a fresh pair of eyes might help. ATS helps manufacturers in many industries improve maintenance effectiveness through offerings that include short-term support and assistance with preventive maintenance. Contact us to learn more.
