Closing the maintenance gap: A back-to-basics approach

Amid supply and demand volatility and worker shortages, the latest operational challenge facing manufacturing executives comes from the equipment they rely on to churn out their finished goods.

During the pandemic era, numerous companies neglected regular equipment maintenance schedules and postponed machinery investments. As a result, meeting increased production goals or reducing costs with sub-optimally running machinery has become challenging. The longer this underinvestment persists, the greater the risk of being trapped in a downward spiral of increasingly hindered production.

Asset reliability is crucial for efficient operations. It allows equipment to run at maximum speeds with minimal downtime, avoids costly emergency repairs, and maintains a steady production flow.

For those facing reduced product demand, improving asset reliability becomes crucial to meeting targets in the least amount of time to maintain efficiency, thereby avoiding overtime and minimizing operational shifts. For those trying to keep up with demand, neglecting maintenance only digs a deeper hole and can quickly snowball into a much more critical situation.

While there is no instant fix for restoring machines to peak performance, a structured focus on rebuilding a robust maintenance program, built on a consistent data-backed strategy and supported by predictive technology, can effectively address the problem and enhance the performance of the maintenance team.

In this two-part series, we’ll examine the wide-ranging causes and implications of the maintenance gap, focusing on how to ensure the basics are covered through traditional best practices. In part two, we’ll examine the future of maintenance and technology's role in driving productivity to new levels while keeping costs in check.

But first, how did we get here? The convergence of multiple issues, including supply chain shortages, shifts within the labor pool, and a lack of documented processes, are among the chief culprits.

Supply chain disruptions during the pandemic made obtaining spare parts and materials challenging. Delays in receiving crucial components led to postponed maintenance, increasing equipment failure risks. Financial pressures caused companies to cut maintenance budgets, reduce spending on parts, and lay off staff. Labor shortages worsened as seasoned professionals retired, leaving critical knowledge gaps and less experienced hires in need of mentorship and development. Lack of well-defined maintenance processes resulted in postponed routine and emergency maintenance, impacting equipment reliability. COVID-induced demand shifts affected equipment operation, leading to unplanned outages. Some companies even pushed equipment to “run till failure” to maximize production

Poor maintenance impacts extend beyond downtime

Poor maintenance practices impact the organization across five areas: equipment, customer, productivity and cost, people, and environment.

1. Equipment impact: Neglected equipment may require more time to diagnose and repair. Lack of off-the-shelf parts leads to increased costs. The lack of regular maintenance accelerates wear and tear, reducing the machinery’s lifespan. It can also lead to more frequent replacements, increasing capital expenditures.
2. Customer impact: Increased equipment downtime disrupts production schedules and results in missed shipments or the need to expedite them. This not only incurs direct costs to the business through service level agreements and penalties but can also lead to poor customer sentiment and potential loss of future business.
3. Productivity and cost impact: Equipment operating below optimal efficiency reduces overall output and productivity. Adding inconsistent or inadequate maintenance results in the machine not performing at its intended precision, resulting in lower quality output. Operating costs increase when repairs are delayed as minor problems escalate. Poorly maintained equipment often requires more power, resulting in increased energy costs.
4. People impact: While the impact on productivity and costs may appear evident, operating poorly maintained equipment places stress on workers and can lead to low morale. Employees supporting production lines with inadequate maintenance often work longer hours, including overtime and weekends, resulting in burnout and turnover. Additionally, this situation poses safety hazards, potentially leading to accidents and injuries, which could result in fines and legal repercussions for the company.
5. Environmental impact: Sub-optimally functioning equipment can produce higher levels of waste material, which may not meet environmental disposal standards. Additionally, leaks or failures in process equipment can lead to spills and environmental contamination, posing risks to local ecosystems and the potential for regulatory fines and cleanup costs.

Getting back to the basics is the first step in re-establishing effective maintenance

In a recent survey, nearly 70% of manufacturers said they are focused on “evolving their maintenance strategies to more proactive and preventative approaches.” While we agree that this is critical, the first step is ensuring you are effectively covering the basics.

First, put the strategic rationale and approach front and center, along with assessing staffing and training needs. A methodical approach to working through a checklist of key tasks will position production managers to improve record-keeping, analyze data to improve planning, and establish KPIs. Let’s consider some specific activities in the “back to basics” program.

1. Strategy development

Return to baseline: In most cases, maintenance has been neglected, and equipment is in a critical state. A world-class maintenance program can only be effective if equipment starts from a serviceable state. For critical assets, it is essential to have a cross-functional team review the conditions of a machine by performing visual and functional inspection and identifying any immediate restorative actions that need to be addressed before a failure occurs.
Reliability-centered maintenance: Prioritize maintenance activities based on the criticality of assets by assessing the impact of asset failures on safety, quality, production, and costs. Determine which assets are most critical to the operation and focus resources on maintaining them to optimize reliability and minimize disruptions. All equipment should have a documented strategy, even if it is run to failure, and critical equipment should have a documented asset care plan.
Preventive maintenance programs: Establish regular, scheduled maintenance activities based on manufacturer recommendations and past maintenance data to prevent equipment failures and extend asset lifespan. Current PMs should be re-evaluated for effectiveness and reoccurring issues should have actions developed to resolve. We’ll cover this topic in more detail in our next article.
Operator asset care programs: Train operators to perform basic maintenance and inspections to identify and address potential issues before they escalate, reducing the burden on specialized maintenance teams. To ensure effectiveness, compliance with activities needs to be tracked through layered process audits.

2. Maintenance work management

Notification creation: Implement a system where issues are reported immediately, and work orders are generated, capturing all necessary details to address the problem.
Prioritization: Work with operations to assign urgency and importance to work orders, considering production input, equipment/part availability, the criticality of the assets involved, and the potential impact on production.
Planning and kitting: Carefully coordinate maintenance tasks, including permits, outside support, production alignment, parts and craft requirements, timing, and estimated costs. Use this information to proactively gather and kit all necessary tools and parts, ensuring that maintenance personnel have everything needed to maximize wrench time.
Scheduling: Arrange maintenance tasks in a manner that minimizes downtime, maximizes technician efficiency, and aligns with production schedules, equipment availability, and regulatory requirements. Communicate this schedule effectively and track performance to the plan.
Coordination and execution: Ensure all teams (production, safety, maintenance, third party, etc.) involved in maintenance tasks are synchronized to execute tasks efficiently and effectively. Review the job before starting and after completion. Finalize tasks by implementing a verification process to ensure that the issue has been resolved and document any lessons learned or feedback for future improvements.
Analysis and improvement: Continuously enhance the maintenance work management process by monitoring performance against the plan and collecting feedback from technicians and operations. Assess the maintenance team’s adherence to the weekly schedule and the effectiveness of their work. Regularly analyze data from both preventative, corrective, and reactive maintenance to update equipment strategies.

3. Storeroom and critical spares management

Part standardization: Standardize equipment parts to reduce inventory complexity and costs. For high-cost critical spares, explore using a "pooled" spare network where production sites can see availability and transfer items between sites.
Inventory control: Conduct regular cycle counts to ensure critical spares are always available and inventory records are up to date. Further, establishing a defined limited access and control process can reduce stock-outs of critical parts by ensuring that the parts consumed are accurately accounted for. For sites that use automated ordering and min/max systems, it is also critical to review the lead times of parts and adjust the min/max accordingly.
Obsolete and slow-moving inventory management: Review, dispose of, or redistribute obsolete and slow-moving items using ABC-XYZ analysis and set up a regular review cadence to continue this in the future.
Supplier management: Select and regularly evaluate suppliers to ensure they meet quality, delivery, and cost requirements.
Storage conditions: Maintain optimal storage conditions to preserve the integrity of sensitive components.

4. Personnel management

Talent knowledge and skill management: Regularly assess the skills and knowledge of maintenance staff to identify areas where training is needed. Develop comprehensive training and apprenticeship programs that provide both theoretical and practical skills, enhancing the capabilities of maintenance personnel over time.
Staffing: Strategically schedule and staff maintenance personnel across all shifts to ensure efficient and effective maintenance coverage, maximizing productivity and minimizing labor costs.
Recruiting: Many companies are struggling to find capable people to fill open gaps in their maintenance organizations. Capital-intensive manufacturing plants need to make this investment by partnering with local trade schools to ensure there is a robust pipeline of new hires and a path to full-time maintenance employees.

5. Maintenance systems and KPIs

CMMS systems: Utilize CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) to streamline scheduling, track maintenance history, manage maintenance records, and analyze data to improve maintenance planning and decision-making.
Maintenance KPIs: Measure the effectiveness of maintenance operations and identify improvement areas using key performance indicators, including downtime, Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), work order schedule adherence, preventive maintenance compliance, and mechanic utilization.

Working methodically through the “back to basics” plan can help stabilize an organization and reduce costly breakdowns and standardize maintenance activities. Once an organization has reached stable maintenance performance, continuous improvement efforts can shift to even more proactive activities enabled by the advances in smart factory technology. We will discuss more on how to structure preventative maintenance programs better and utilize smart factory technology in our next installment.