Maintenance Management Archives

Maintenance Management

Workforce Development

Big changes are happening in today’s workforce. These changes have nothing to do with downsizing, global competition, or stress; it is the problem of a distinct generation gap. Young people entering the workforce are of diversified background and have much different attitudes about work. They want a life‐work balance. They want to be led, not managed — and certainly not micro‐managed. The new mode is flexibility and informality. A large proportion of our managers of the veteran era have been trained in relatively autocratic and directive methods that don’t sit well with today’s employees. Are we preparing our workforce to meet tomorrow’s need?

Maintenance Management

4 Ways To Break Free From Being ‘Too Busy’

America began to acknowledge its cultural obsession with “busyness” a few years ago, when Tim Kreider wrote the now legendary piece “The Busy Trap” for the New York Times. Nearly three years later, while our culture certainly hasn’t changed, an admitted addiction to busyness has at least transitioned from groundbreaking journalism to mainstream conversations.

Maintenance Management

“Wrench Time” – Why the “FEAR” to Measure Maintenance Productivity?

The best results of maintenance practices carried out in enterprises critically depend on the efforts of maintenance staff to ensure their day-to-day actions comply with the schedule of services in order to avoid unwanted failures, correctly diagnose the behavior of active production processes, and ensure quality information recorded in the work orders.

Maintenance Management

Optimizing your Shutdown Program in 5 Steps

Manufacturing facilities know downtime is money. Every hour you are offline for a shutdown is costly from both lost revenue and cost of the workforce employed to maintain the facility. This article will discuss the 5 steps to Best Practices that will optimize your shutdown program.

Maintenance Management

7 Ways Leaders Fail

To mangle a 270-year-old sonnet written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning—How do we dislike our bosses? Let us count the ways. Harvard Business Review (HBR) surveyed 300,000 workers and finds the issues workers have with leadership are almost equally divided between actions, and the failure to act.

Maintenance Management

Failure Teaches Success

I absolutely hate to fail, but must admit that failure is an unescapable part of life. Thankfully most of my failures over the years have been relatively minor. Nonetheless, they have been a true source of irritation and frustration that in many ways outweigh the successes. Fortunately my early mentors taught me to use failure, no matter how serious or minor, as a learning tool and a platform to build upon.

Maintenance Management

Leadership in Maintenance Weekly/Daily Operations and Maintenance Meetings

Daily and weekly meetings between operations and maintenance are crucial in taking the efficiency of your daily maintenance to a higher level. Coordinating meetings where various departments prioritize work orders (WO) and maintenance is the foundation for a partnership between operations and maintenance. Such meetings create efficiency. Well-organized meetings with clear goals and agendas can completely change the culture for the better in an organization.

Maintenance Management

The New Productivity Challenge

The single greatest challenge facing managers in the developed countries of the world is to raise the productivity of knowledge and service workers. This challenge, which will dominate the management agenda for the next several decades, will ultimately determine the competitive performance of companies. Even more important, it will determine the very fabric of society and the quality of life in every industrialized nation.

Maintenance Management

Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail

Over the past decade, I have watched more than 100 companies try to remake themselves into significantly better competitors. They have included large organizations and small ones, companies based in the United States and elsewhere, corporations that were on their knees, and companies that were earning good money. These efforts have gone under many banners: total quality management, reengineering, right sizing, restructuring, cultural change, and turnaround. But, in almost every case, the basic goal has been the same: to make fundamental changes in how business is conducted in order to help cope with a new, more challenging market environment.