Maintenance Management Archives

Maintenance Management

Should You Contract Out Maintenance?

As an option to reduce plant costs, plant managers may consider contracting out maintenance work. This may have some merit, depending on many factors, including the nature of the business. One question that may be asked is, “Is maintenance a part of our ‘core business’?” Let’s look at a couple of examples. If the business is a hospital, where revenue is generated by the sale of medical services, and maintenance consists of a few specialized activities, such as janitorial, H&V system servicing, and repair of advanced medical diagnostic and monitoring systems, then contracting out these activities is almost certainly the best approach.

Maintenance Management

Whose Job Is Leadership, Anyway?

How does the current state of leadership affect employee engagement? What is the effect of both good and bad leadership as it pertains to organizational health and engagement? From a leadership perspective, who actually is responsible for employee engagement?

Maintenance Management

Maintenance Cost and Estimated Replacement Value

Yesterday you were a happy camper. Today you are told your Maintenance Cost (MC) as a percent of your Estimated Replacement Value (ERV) is 4.9%. According to Consulting, Inc. and your corporate management 4.9% is way too high. Good performers are under 3%, some operations are even under 2%. So, the question is what are you going to do about it Mr. Maintenance Manager?

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.