Does Maintenance's Opinion Matter?

My first hand experience with maintenance, or lack of was with a few navy ships that came into the shipyard for repair. The ships were in such bad condition that it took a major overhaul to make them seaworthy again. I don't know what the reasons were for the lack of maintenance, but may it have been the cost. I think the owners came to realize that the money saved in not performing maintenance would cost them a lot more in the end. The ships belonged to the Canadian and Venezuelan navies.

Everyone's opinion matters, but the value of the opinion is often inversely proportional to the position in the company heirarchy.
If you want to know how anything works don't ask the chief accountant.
Del

It happened few years back in one of the hospitals in Oman. Problem in R.O plant was wrongly diagnosed and management waned to replace the membrane . Maintenance department requested the hospital administration and carried out the proper maintenance and extended the life of the membrane for few more years thereby saving few thousands Omani Riyals.

"Maintenance is many times mistakenly regarded as a cost center rather than revenue producer"

This thought is more often than not becoming a thing of the past. Most companies are seeing the benefit of "proper" maintenance. The word "proper" is key here. When a maintenance department has proven to be effective, then they are regarded as an asset.

In my experience a maintenance department that is poorly operated looses its credibility, thus leading to decisions being made outside of the department. Most finance officers and production management know and understand the importance of maintenance, if not they need to be replaced.

I once worked at a facility where the maintenance department was so dysfunctional, the production management attitude was " why should we give you the machine it will be in worse condition when you are done working on it"

This same maintenance department was eventually re-staffed and re-organized. After several years of proving itself the general attitude changed, leading to improvement in the companies bottom line.

Any company will invest where it gets a positive return.

GA dthomas16,

The credibility of the department is developed over time. The stories of success also need to be communicated to those in Administration so they see the value of money spent on preventive and predictive maintenance. John Maxwell says "experience without reflection is opportunity for learning lost." When things don't go well, equipment or systems break down and when things go well we need to see why they went the way they did and make adjustments as needed.

Constant vigilance is required to keep a smooth running department. When people get lazy or complacent, either in the office or those doing the maintenance, the whole department suffers. It is incumbent on the leadership to bring all the people and ideas together and see that everyone and everything are working their best.

The Production Manager should coordinate with Engineer allowing sufficient time to carry out routine maintenance. Sometime if production comes to a halt they support the maintenance department by giving their idling men to assist in jobs requiring more man power but sometimes they refuse to assist. It depends on the attitude whether like to restart production quickly or they want to find fault with the Engineer. In many factories production staff work for even 30 yrs but (educated)engineers change every 2 or 3 years. Technician engineers too work for long periods,even 30 years. Even in contracting companies (educated/qualified)engineers leave every 2 or 3 years but technician engineers work even 30 yrs while MD/CEO play with supervisors and technicians.

Sorry, don't think this is becoming a 'thing of the past'. Even when the Management team 'buys in' to a reliability program with preventative maintenance and PdM's, analyzing heat, vibration, sound and whatever else they can think of. They will still tell you to run it to failure. Like it is ever going to fail when there is no production.

Even when the Corporate people mandate that a system will be phased out, they won't do it because of the cost. But when it fails and continues to fail because reliable parts can no longer be obtained for the obsolete system that was supposed to have been phased out. It is still a Maintenance problem and cost. Cost for the parts to replace, cost for the downtime, cost for not being able to produce.

Even when Corporate mandates that we will only use XYZ parts, the Management team will allow non spec parts to be installed with new equipment knowing full well that we don't have the spares in the warehouse and the 'bean counters' won't allow them to stock the non spec parts. Again it is a maintenance problem and cost.

Even Corporate gets into the swing of things when they state that you will replace an entire system with new technology. They don't supply the parts and methods to retrofit. It all has to come out of the Maintenance budget to purchase and install. And again it is a Maintenance problem and cost. And what do you mean you had to pay overtime to get that done?!

Our Maintenance personnel are 'scheduled' for 7.5 hours a day for preventative maintenance. How can they do preventative maintenance during production hours? Who is going to allow them to stop production to do a 1.25 hour PM on anything. And they are trying to tell Corporate that our Reliability Program is up and running GREAT!! Look at all of the PM's that we are getting accomplished.

I went out a few months ago to accomplish a PM on safety sensors. Had the Work Order on my clipboard along with the procedures. Get to the site, no sensors. Heck, no wall. It was all removed to replace a system that had failed 3 weeks prior. Scheduler didn't know, Supervisor didn't know. Guess who had to spec out the re-installation of the system? I did, but I scrapped the old one and updated the whole thing. Worked for me, and changed a 1.5 hour PM down to .5 hours.

I feel your frustration, There are companies that continue to function as you describe. The changes necessary to become a proactive vs. reactive organization starts at the top, it also includes all employees everyone must be on board. One of the major road blocks that I have seen are the hourly employees (which BTW I am one of them)

Most people don't like change and a lot of change is required. As a technician, manager, engineer or any other function of a maintenance department, we all have choices. We can just go with the flow, we can try to improve or do nothing.

Personally I believe that even small changes can make a huge difference. If I am able to make a permanent correction then my job is now easier. If I am not allowed to make a correction, upon the next failure, I smile and say I am doing what is required when asked why it continues to fail.

My responsibilities are to the operators, I am there for them, they are my customer. I try to do everything I possibly can to help them.

I will admit I do work for a company that sees and appreciates a well functioning maintenance department.

At the company I work for, even the smallest change to the plant needs a "modification control process" to be followed.

The problem being no one know how to do it or who is in charge.

After battling for six months to get approval to have a piece of equipment painted to stop corrosion, I gave up.

It's easier to just do the change and act shocked when someone notices, probably 1-2 years down the track.

"It's easier to just do the change and act shocked when someone notices"

I guess that's where the phrase "it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission" comes into play. I've got a good buddy who was in the Navy as a pilot who relayed that to me.

Something I tell my guys here is that "problems don't get better with age or neglect". That applies to mechanical things as well as relationships between co-workers. Fix the problem before it becomes big and requires more time, resources and gets a lot more people involved. Fires are easy to put out when they're small, usually.

In some fa factories maintenance is classified under expenditure and production under revenue.Similarly in some companies sales is considered as income and engineering as expenditure.

The classification is not so much the issue, It is basic finance. Anything that does not generate direct income is considered overhead. Most companies also recognize revenue saved by expenditures. In other words there has to be a savings or direct profit in any company to survive and grow.

For example the company in which I am employed for recently made an investment of 40k USD, the initial investment made a direct return of 60k USD and will continue provide a return for the next four years. I work in the maintenance department by the way.

At the V.A. Hospital Mountain Home Johnson City Tennessee the Maintance Department was not consulted when they designed the fresh air intake that was moved and place near the Emergency Room where Ambulances would drive up leaving engines running and filling the hospital with exhaust. Maintance was always trying to clean the vents, filteration, and coolers to no end.

They solved the problem, they claim, by placing a plexiglass wall around the intake allowing only air to be drawn in from the roof area. From the parking lot you can see that the coolers and exhaust are located on the roof directly above the opening for fresh air intake. Funny how just asking the people who will have to work with the product to be built for input would have saved 1000's if not a few million over the life of the building.

I work for a company maintenance dept that had done almost no maintenance on the plant due to operational priorities.

Then last year they decided to start doing regular maintenance but by then the plant needed a full overhaul just to get it to a standard that a regular maintenance regime would work.

And now due to cost concerns the accountants have decided that the maintenance department was costing to much and have cut it down to bearly a skeleton crew with no shift support.

Care to guess how this is going to work out

Sounds like the old plant will be closed down or will be replaced with new.

It's all business.

Maintenance is many times mistakenly regarded as a cost center

Depends on the view...from first principles:

1. The business case is always Capital Investment = ROI (profit). The aim is not to produce goods, but to turn a profit.

eg McDonalds produces burgers incidentally in turning a profit. Bean Counters are in control, and they only have a top-down view, where cost of ownership (including maintenance) is merely an estimated factor in the ROI calculation.

2. Intially, the budgets follow forecast, until the production equipment begins to wear , and the maintenance budget increases, impacting on ROI margins.

3. The chasm in understanding between the engineers and the bean counters results in scepticism, and the bean counters consider the increased costs to be a temporary spike. They refer to their initial forecasts and regard those estimates as re-validated (after all we threw money at the problem didn't we?) and they exhort the engineers to save costs in all areas in order to recover the expenditure.

4. The engineer is by nature a "can do guy"....so savings are made for a while in terms of reliability, until the issue of availability rears it's head again.

5. Meetings ad nauseum....the engineers are allocated resources to quell the threat of even more downtime . This leaves the Bean Counters feeling a little helpless and queasy since they are accountable to the shareholders.

6. A budget forecast is demanded from the engineers on the basis of predicting the organisations' cash flow, and the engineers seize the moment...the BC's alleviate their immediate indigestion by slashing the proposed budget in half.

7. Maintenance has now matured into a de facto cost-centre.

8. Time later, and half of the repairs/ modifications that should have been done, result in a major loss of production......reality bites....Maintenances' opinion does matter!