Facility Maintenance Maintenance is a battlefield with limited resources being Skilled Labour, Tools and Procedures. A common response is “We can’t seem to break out of Reactive Maintenance because we’re busy with problems.

This Reactive Maintenance environment reinforces your Teams thinking, and the only relief is knowing “We fixed that in good time and we’re back in production”. And your Team is rewarded from a negative reinforcement.

Here’s how to make a difference!

Every facility has certain tasks which they religiously undertake which really don’t provide an increase in reliability. e.g. A calibration done every week, even though it never drifts out of calibration. Or we replace that seal every six months with no signs of wear.

Take time out with your technicians to critically assess What we are doing, and ask does it add value? Then stop doing the unproductive tasks.

At the same time track your top 10 downtime events, and conduct using your Technicians a Root Cause Analysis. e.g. The reason that Electric Motor failed is because the Fan Cowl was blocked and it overheated. And when we disconnected it the crimp lugs were in bad condition.

So Investigate, often failures occur because of multiple defects.

You will be surprised at how common root causes are, and addressing them will stop recurring failures. Those bad crimp lugs, if you find one I’d almost be certain it’s the tip of the iceberg.

The solution might be Lack of proper tools, or we are purchasing poor quality, or some refresher training.

Once assets are restored to “Fit for Use” the psychology changes people feel Proud of what they have achieved, workshop talk becomes positive and this feeds on itself. If you can reinforce the positives your making a huge gain in Maintenance Management.

3Phi Reliability through Skills transfer & Proven Preventative Maintenance Checklists implement sustainable reliability.