The ‘Maintenance Crisis’ and Innovations that are Changing it

Ashley Halligan, Property Management Analyst, Software Advice

A couple months ago, I wrote an article about the top five careers in facility management. I interviewed a broad range of professionals for that story. But it was during an interview with Joel Leonard, President of SkillTV, that I started to ponder what he referred to as “the maintenance crisis”–a depletion of skilled workers in the maintenance management workforce caused by baby boomers retiring and too few young professionals entering the field.

Leonard got me wondering: What does the maintenance crisis mean for the future of maintenance management? And who is doing something about it?

Defining the Maintenance Crisis

When I spoke to Leonard this morning, he opened the conversation with a startling statement:

“I was at Harley Davidson yesterday. They have 4,500 manufacturing personnel, and the average age is 55–and it’s one of the most legendary entities in the United States. If that’s not scary, I don’t know what is.”

And he’s not the only one discussing the growing shortage of skilled workers. A Minneapolis Star Tribune article published this week released poll results in which 72 percent of HR professionals surveyed “identified the pending retirement of baby boomers as a problem their organizations hoped to address.”

In fact, a 2010 Pew Research Center report shows that every day for the next 19 years, approximately 10,000 baby boomers will cross the 65-year-old threshold. Furthermore, data supplied by the Congressional Research Service indicates that as many as 56% of maintenance and related roles across industries are held by baby boomers.

What does the maintenance crisis mean for the skilled labor roles that are being vacated as retirees leave the workforce? It means the number of skilled labor professionals will soon be at a startling low, and unless younger generations enter this field, these roles will be left unfilled.

I interviewed a handful of industry professionals to see who they think are making strides in this transitionary period–and how they’re using innovation to overcome it.

Starting Young

Clearly, children and young adults need to be encouraged to consider trade schools and pursue technical positions. One example of a pioneer in this respect is the Nuts, Bolts, & Thingamajigs summer camp series, whose main purpose is encouraging hands-on “tinkering.”

In a November press release, the organization said, “The United States has become a nation of ‘non-tinkerers,’ a new survey shows, and manufacturing leaders say the ‘hands-off’ policy around the house is a leading cause of disinterest among American youth to fill much-needed, future skilled labor jobs in the industrial arena.” Specialized camps can help youth discover new interests, and learn valuable skills that could lead to more skilled labor career choices.

Subduing Stigmas and Stirring Interest

Part of the maintenance crisis is that there are two significant stigmas in the skilled labor workforce: (1) these are dirty, underpaid positions that are (2) primarily opportunities for men.

“People have a misconception that these roles are dull, dumb, and dreadful–involving mops, buckets, and posterior cleavage,” Leonard says. “People don’t realize the technicalities, compensation opportunities, the innovativeness of computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS software), and the job security that comes with these roles.”

Leonard also addresses stigma #2, “The current workforce is 5-percent female–why exclude an entire gender out of tradition? Women can do many of these things better than some men.”

“Women assume they know nothing about welding, for example. But, in virtual reality scenarios, women regularly outperform men. It’s their steady hand, attention to detail, fine-tuned, delicate finesse,” says Amy Earl, VP of Antech Systems.

She adds, “Stereotypes were established when American interest was shifted toward liberal arts, four-year degrees, and programs like law and medicine. It’s an extreme pendulum swing, and has essentially become a public relations problem. I feel most productive when I make something–my pride is in the product. We need to turn the stigma for manufacturing and maintenance around.”

Leonard, in partnership with Antech Systems, created the Occupy a Job application, encouraging Americans to “close the skills gap and occupy American jobs.” This Web-based tool helps students and job-seekers assess their skills sets and find career opportunities in the maintenance world.

Gamification and Innovative Training

One of Antech Systems’ strategies involves the gamification of maintenance training, claiming that real-life gaming scenarios improve employees’ knowledge retention and provide a holistic understanding of their actions.

“We pioneered scenario-based training apps, beginning with military maintenance in the Navy,” Earl says. “Adult Learning Theory shows self-correction leads to more significant retention. This is precisely what game-based training allows for.”

Antech offers this philosophy on game-based training:

“By simulating your equipment and creating real-life scenarios in a game-based environment, you can reduce costly repairs or misuse of machinery by 50%–like we did with the fire extinguishing system on fighter jets. You can let your people perform incorrectly without costly or dangerous consequences, and provide remediation that shows them what they should have done. This helps them understand the repercussions of their actions.”

Leonard also used Martin Tauber, a technician at Advance Pierre Foods, as an example of an innovator. Tauber pioneered Break Through Training, a concept in which TVs in breakrooms at his organization continuously show training videos.

Leonard says, “Break Through allows employees to constantly be saturated with best practices. This has even led to operators becoming technicians.”

The core strategy in battling the maintenance crisis is creating an interest in generations outside of the baby boomers–beginning with training practices for current facility employees, or unemployed Americans–and engaging the nation’s youth in hands-on, skilled labor activities. And this all starts with diluting the stigmas associated with maintenance and manufacturing roles, and providing effective training from there.

Are you a maintenance professional? What are your thoughts on the maintenance crisis? Do you, or your company, have creative strategies to retain, train, and attract employees? If so, feel free to share your comments below, or email me at [email protected].

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.

The ‘Maintenance Crisis’ and Innovations that are Changing it