Not another maintenance management article on the latest fad. What is it this time Lean, 6 Sigma, TPM, TQM, RCM, BPR?
Yes and no, certainly all those tools and techniques (and a good few besides) have their uses and I have a few articles that refer to aspects of them in this series, but that is not what core maintenance management is about. In my 30+ years experience of managing operations, maintenance people and equipment and specifically some of the scenarios I have come across in my last ten years of commercial troubleshooting, mentoring and training to a variety of industry, public and private sector organisations I keep coming up against the same basic problems, and they are basic, they cannot be overcome by the perceived panacea of computer software (although it can be a valuable management tool), they require leadership across board, senior and operational management level and like it or not that means maintenance management taking the initiative and some pretty mundane but essential work to set things up. 
Yes we are talking basic maintenance management, because that is what I so often see so poorly understood and mismanaged. It’s not just the small companies, we are talking blue chip organisations here, who are spouting ‘best practice’ initiatives but quite literally do not have, comprehensive or accurate listing of what equipment they have or up to date Process and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&IDs). Yet these same organisations demonstrate their compliance to the Health & Safety authorities, auditors and client review teams. What they have is a pyramid of systems, processes and procedures balanced, inverted, on a too often extremely poor basic knowledge of what they have and how it is operating (whether it be service or production). This creaking structure has been propped up here and there over the years to keep going, painted a different colour now and then to meet changing demands or fashions and they have convinced themselves that it is the core to their business. It may well be, but often service or production is maintained by individuals despite of the systems not because of them. Ask yourself how many spreadsheets or databases are run by different managers independent of ‘the system’… now convince me your system is working.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some good software systems out there and some inspired managers at all levels, but too often they become disheartened because of the situations they inherit, the amount of fire fighting they have to do and the constant demand to optimise resources (save money), add to that the corporate or organisational incentives (flavour of the month), legislative and compliance demands of any modern operation, and keep a demanding ‘system’ updated.
CSA have implemented cost effective maintenance improvement programs for many leading manufacturers. For a no obligation initial chat; please complete the form and we will be happy to contact you to discuss how we may be able to help you.