Need of Motivation for Maintenance Staff

Sanjay B. Chari, Pentair Water India Private Limited

Motivation for Maintenance Staff

I. Understanding Maintenance

As all of us know that in the olden days the call for maintenance was given only when there was a failure of machinery in a production system and would last till the machine is put back in operation. This scenario has changed recently and lots of stress has been put on maintenance function. Also its impact on the customer satisfaction is known in terms of quality and commitment. Apart from this, safety – an important key factor in every organization, is also a function of maintenance.

“Maintenance is a thankless job”, this is repeated by us every time and also sometimes, use it as a tool to be with the maintenance person. Many a times it’s true. We don’t appreciate their efforts as we cannot get their direct results like the sales showing their numbers, production showing their targets achieved and crossed. The maintenance data is also recorded, tracked, presented and analysed, but it is viewed and understood only whenever the production or sales targets are missed due to some failure of the machine. In other words, we try to understand the maintenance data with negative approach and to understand its impact on the business loss.

A highly motivated and enthusiastic maintenance team can deliver results which are unbelievable and are the ones which every organization expects from them:

OEE : The maintenance team helps not only in increasing the machine availability but also increases the overall equipment effectiveness by reducing the losses through up gradation, alteration, set up time reductions and through the elimination of unwanted processes.
Safety : Safe environment is a requirement of every organization and for Maintenance team, it is one of the key function where in they are accountable for the safety of the people working in the plant, more than the safety of the plant & equipments.
Contribution to High Productivity : Every organization always focuses on the high productivity and many of them achieve also. The real productivity is the one which is “Stress-free Productivity”. The Maintenance team adds value to eliminate the stresses of the production personnel through equipment up gradations.
Ergonomics : This is a key factor for Maintenance to eliminate the fatigue on the operators and are able to contribute a lot in this.
Contribution to product cost : The variable overhead is a substantial factor in any organization when we consider the product cost. Maintenance being the major controller and distributor for utilities of any organization, they play a very vital role in managing them. If these are managed well, it becomes one of the major contributors for product the cost reduction.
Maintenance cost reduction : The expenses for the maintenance activities is controlled by the maintenance team and given a freedom to manage the cost, they do it very well by control of spares, inventory etc. through developments, improvements and maintenance reduction/prevention activities.

II. What is Motivation?

Motivation is the creation of an environment which makes the individual to achieve their goals easily, better than expected and without creation of fatigue, stress and unhappiness.

Motivation can be extrinsic and intrinsic.

Intrinsic motivation is the performance of the task for own sake. It is basically in relation to the attitude of a person towards the work which he performs. This is generally seen when the person is with positive, creative, friendly and vibrant attitude. There is little or no motivation required for this kind of people and is always on the move. The hobbies of an individual can be called as intrinsic motivation.

Extrinsic motivation is purely generated due to the tangible and non tangible benefits the employee is getting from an organization. Tangible benefits include the salary rise, awards in terms of money, promotions, etc. and non tangible benefits are like recognition of the effort, praising in public, status etc. Among many motivating factors, money is always considered to be the immediate factor which motivates the employee immediately but also does not last for long.

Maintenance team members are always little different from other shop floor person in many ways. The shop floor or production people generally track and work only on numbers and they try to deliver in the best possible way. This activity build in the pressure on the maintenance crew as the importance is not given to their needs and also the long term impact of non maintenance is not understood by many of us.

Understanding few characteristics of a successful maintenance personnel will help us in motivating them and hence are listed below:

A result oriented person : Every activity of maintenance has to end with a pre desired result and hence the person has to be result oriented.
Good technical knowledge and skill
Analytical and patient
Creative and hardworking
Physically fit and able to handle pressure
Always a learner

III. Why does the maintenance personnel get demotivated ?

For motivation for maintenance staff, we need to know why they get de motivated. Few points are listed below :

Non recognition of the efforts or appreciation not at par, with the sales or production teams.
Non approval or delayed approvals of funds for investing in the equipments as the way invest in other activities.
Bad/poor treatment from their customers like productions supervisors and others.
Unwanted stress created during Maintenance and equipment failures.
Non availability of spares due to inventory and other investment issues.
Non availability of equipments for maintenance and demand for availability.
Poor support from other departments like stores, procurement etc.
No or less excess to the newer technology in the market.

***IV. Motivation for Maintenance* *Team***

Maintenance person will be motivated if we help them to achieve the following :

Job satisfaction : Any maintenance person is best satisfied through the results which he gets, due to his work, put in for an hour to unlimited number of hours. For him this becomes the most memorable time and all his physical and mental fatigue is eliminated. He, at this time praises himself for the achievement. This makes a maintenance person a self driven individual throughout his career. At this moment if we appreciate his efforts, it becomes an event which remains forever in his mind. This becomes the motivation for him in the coming days. In most cases we fail to do so as we find that we have already lost few production hours due the problem which he was working on and we tend to blame them in place of appraising.
Recognition : recognition of good work at right time and the right place adds the value to any individuals life and hence as mentioned above, it becomes very important factor when we are praising a maintenance person.
Job Rotation/ Enrichment : These are considered to be the most driving factors for any individual in today’s work environment. But, for a maintenance person it becomes daily as there is complete variation in his activities as well makes him to learn new things everyday to cater to his job requirements. However it is the responsibility of the supervisor and the management that we bring in the new technology as and when possible as frustrations will generate working with the same old technology.
Reduced Stress at work : This is a key factor for maintenance people as by default in every organizations, the maintenance crew is always available for work, round the clock. They generally work on all holidays, and Sundays, which brings in the disturbance of their work-life balance. This itself is a point for generation of stress for them and further to this when we have unexpected failures, the total pressure which is for the production targets is transferred to them. In this situation, we expected best from them and also with the maximum stress. We need to ensure that they are made comfortable to work in these situations, so that they can deliver faster and better.

Other benefits of motivation for maintenance team: This includes all the points we discussed in tangible and non tangible benefits. This may includes awards, transportation, promotions, salary revisions, etc.

How to Fix the 70/30 Phenomenon

When you ask front line supervisors or team leaders if all people in their teams are performing to the same standards or if some are doing more work and achieving more results than others, you will often get the same answer. All over the world, the most common answer, after some analysis, verifies that about 30% of the people do 70% of the work.

Zen and the Art of Managing Maintenance

Unfettered expression and spiritual satisfaction? How does this relate to managing a maintenance department, especially one in the U.S. Postal Service? Open your mind. Take a page from the Zen Buddhist monks who preach: When you are quiet and listen, you become aware of sounds not normally heard. USPS maintenance leaders are listening and beginning to understand that maintenance success doesn't come through closed minds and closed doors.

Why do maintenance improvement initiatives fail to deliver? (Hedgehog or Fox?)

It is not uncommon that many reliability and maintenance improvement initiatives fail to deliver expected results. Why is it so? Some of the most common causes I have observed include:

Why Maintenance Improvement Efforts Fail

Why do improvement efforts fail or perhaps not sustain the gains? There are many reasons, but those most often stated are “lack of commitment” and not “following the process”. But why is there lack of commitment, and why aren’t processes followed? Here are a few of the reasons that I’ve seen:

TPM and RCM: Whirled Class

When a piece of production machinery broke down at the Whirlpool plant in Findlay, Ohio, several years back, it was accepted practice for the machine operator to call maintenance and then sit back and wait for the problem to be fixed. Critical information and knowledge was not shared between the operator and maintenance technician. Like many companies, these workers were stuck in traditional roles - operators run the machines, maintenance fixes the machines, and the two do not cross. As a result, productivity opportunities were missed.

Where Do Maintenance Professionals Come From?

Many managers are unaware that best-in-class companies routinely design-out maintenance at the inception of a project. That, clearly, is the first key to highest equipment reliability and plant profitability. Whenever maintenance events occur as time goes on, the real industry leaders see every one of these events as an opportunity to upgrade. Indeed, upgrading is the second key, and upgrading is the job of highly trained, well-organized, knowledgeable reliability professionals.

TPM and Tecate: The New Translation

The true translation — might it be proper to say a new and improved translation? — is being used today by Cervecería Cuauhtemoc Moctezuma, one of the largest brewers of beer in Latin America. Known throughout this company as Mantenimiento Alto Desempeño (MAD), or translated as High-Performance Maintenance, the concept of TPM is alive and well at the company's six plants in Mexico. Perhaps the best example is at CCM's brewery in Tecate, located a short drive from the U.S.-Mexico border on the Baja California peninsula.

Need of Motivation for Maintenance Staff