Uptime: Is Maintenance Ready for a Paradigm Shift?

Despite a shrinking workforce, the emerging model of industrial maintenance and repair will most likely launch businesses into a world of greater performance, lower operating costs and higher process reliability. This new model will include maintenance as an integral part of the strategic business goals and objectives. Many will say it’s about time. Those who hang onto the traditional approaches to maintenance and repair, however, may find it difficult to survive.

Now is the time to fundamentally re-think the role that “maintenance” plays in achieving strategic business goals, given a rapidly changing industrial technology landscape, a compelling business need for improved physical asset reliability and a challenging search for skilled employees. It’s also time to think beyond the maintenance department and engage all of the contributors and stakeholders of process reliability. In short, businesses simply can no longer afford to focus on a traditional “repair-based” approach to maintenance.

The skills-shortage “perfect storm” of this past 10 years has been intensifying and will no doubt have broad-reaching affects. On a positive note, these shortages will be the catalyst for improved maintenance models: the new maintenance paradigm.

Threatened traditions

Traditional maintenance organizations are frequently seen as an expensive overhead cost or as a source of inexpensive in-house project labor, and the maintenance function is rarely included as part of the strategic business plan. In these types of organizations, maintenance work is predominantly reactive or repair-based, with minimum amounts of proactive, planned, preventive work. Too much time is spent “fixing” things or on in-house project work or both.

Many traditional maintenance personnel are products of informal on-the-job learning during their careers. Unfortunately, these highly experienced maintenance personnel are often pulled away from planned and preventive tasks to address emergency repairs. They spend too much time searching for the right parts or making do with used or sub-par items. In these environments, it almost always seems as if there aren’t enough maintenance people to get the required work done. This situation, in turn, leads to higher maintenance costs and frequent production interruptions or facility complaints. Ultimately, the business encounters higher costs per unit produced, as well as higher per-square-foot operating costs.

An attack on business

Maintenance skills shortages are the equivalent of an entirely new attack on business that not only threatens maintenance but the competitive position of the business. It is a silent, stealth attack. Traditional approaches to maintaining physical assets (i.e., equipment, plants and facilities) are increasingly threatened by conditions associated with attracting, hiring, training and retaining skilled maintenance professionals. These conditions include:

• Shortages of maintenance professionals: technicians, supervisors, engineers and managers
• Shortages of occupation-specific education and training programs
• Public and political apathy regarding applicable secondary and post-secondary technical education
• A lackluster image of industrial and facility maintenance jobs
• Unattractive work schedules (i.e., long hours, weekends, holidays, etc.)
• Re-shoring of manufacturing jobs from formerly “low-wage” countries
•  A proliferation of productivity-improving, high-tech automation

The bottom line: There will NOT be enough skilled maintenance professionals to fill industrial- and facility-maintenance job openings. That said, “great places to work” will continue to attract qualified people. Others will attract the best and brightest with non-traditional compensation packages and financial incentives. Translation: The “not-so-great places to work,” mid- to small-sized businesses and those with uncreative financial packages will go begging.

Making the shift

Businesses with reliable, high-performing physical assets will thrive. They will also continue to attract the best and brightest, as well as develop creative reliability-improvement solutions to combat the intensifying shortage of skilled maintenance professionals. These businesses will have a solid foundation of revenue-generating physical assets.

Sadly, merely applying more and more of the traditional tools of maintenance will not solve the problems that many mid- to small-sized businesses confront. (You have to wonder what could compel a maintenance organization to think it can rely on less-than-optimal approaches to solve tomorrow’s significant challenges.) More of the same is not the answer.

Maintenance, for the most part, has followed a model, pattern or organizational standard based on tradition. These models, patterns or standards are called “paradigms.” Old paradigms can be shifted by external forces that establish a “new normal” or by “pioneers” from within the organization.

Too often, external paradigm-shifting forces (such as skills shortages) are perceived as threats rather than opportunities because they challenge the “traditional normal.” Many times, these external threats are unknowingly labeled as short-lived and, thus, ignored. Attempts to shift the maintenance paradigm from within are often seen as experiments, pilot programs or something the new boss wants. Whatever the perception, tradition wins the battle against change—but business loses the war.

What will it take to overcome shortages of maintenance professionals? For starters, be prepared to abandon traditional maintenance approaches in favor of more collaborative, results-oriented and focused approaches. We need to break through the “organizational silos” that have contributed to the ineffectiveness of some of our traditional approaches.

To do this, we must recognize that maintenance performed by the maintenance department alone cannot eliminate all causes of unreliable equipment. In fact, most of the causes of failures and poor performance are outside the direct control of the maintenance group.

Next, we must recognize that a much-needed shift in the organization’s maintenance paradigm cannot occur from within the department itself. Other stakeholders and top-level management must become engaged and committed to leading change at some point early in the transformation.

Surviving the skills shortage

Here is the premise: Reliable equipment is less expensive to operate and maintain than poor performing, unreliable equipment. But reliable equipment does not just happen by itself. Reliable equipment requires reliable work processes (i.e., systems, procedures, etc.) and reliable people in a purpose-driven work culture doing the right things at the right time. This collaborative relationship is shown in the accompanying People, Equipment, & Work Processes diagram.

With this three-element relationship in mind, here are 11 steps that can start shifting the maintenance paradigm in your business and build a “High-Reliability Work Culture.” This type of work culture is key to surviving the maintenance-skills shortage.

1.  Identify the most critical, the most at-risk physical assets in your business, plant or facility. This is the equipment that puts the company, plant, customers and/or employees at risk of losing something of value. Involve knowledgeable stakeholders from other departments in the identification process. (Equipment)

2.  Isolate the equipment history (one to two years). This should include production quality and throughput data; maintenance and repair history; design engineering and modification history. (Equipment & Work Processes)

3.   Identify the most penalizing failure modes, such as equipment that is not performing as intended. (Equipment & Work Processes)

4.   Identify and analyze failures, noting chronic (repeat), sporadic (irregular) and one-time trends. (Equipment & Work Processes)

5.   Select failures for root-cause analysis. Focus on the most chronic, high-duration, penalizing failures. Involve knowledgeable stakeholders from other departments in the root-cause-analysis process. Identify solutions from simple to complex. (People, Equipment & Work Process)

6.   Make focused improvements to the targeted critical equipment based on the results of the root-cause analysis. Monitor the effectiveness of the corrective action and adjust as needed. (People & Equipment)

7.   Document new work instructions (procedures) to address the causes and corrective actions to eliminate the problems. (Work Processes)

8.   Train and qualify all personnel from all shifts and departments that will be required to implement, oversee or be affected by the corrective actions and new work instructions. Explain the critical nature of the equipment and the compelling business reasons for the new procedures. Prerequisite skills-education and training could also be required. (People & Work Processes)

9.   Clearly define expectations of all personnel involved in sustaining the improvements. Specify their roles, responsibilities and accountabilities, including continuous improvement associated with the new standardized procedures. (People & Work Processes)

10. Leverage the focused-improvement results and elimination of the problem to reinforce commitment to and a sense of ownership for the new work processes. Develop escalation policies to define the points at which others with more expertise must be called in to resolve problems. (People)

11. After several iterations of steps 1 through 10, develop a “Reliability Policy” that communicates the purposes and importance of achieving the highest levels of reliability of the critical physical assets in the business. Use this new policy to lead ongoing improvements according to the above model or one that’s based on these concepts. (People)

Winners and losers

Countless businesses have tried many different programs (or projects) to improve the way they perform maintenance. Some focus on tools and techniques deployed primarily for the maintenance organizations (i.e., CMMS, predictive maintenance, planning and scheduling). Other maintenance-improvement programs were deployed for the broader business (such as Reliability-Centered Maintenance, Total Productive Maintenance and autonomous/operator-performed maintenance).

While techniques deployed by and for maintenance organizations have been largely successful, those deployed for the broader business have not been as fortunate. The latter require a paradigm shift in the way maintenance is perceived and performed. A paradigm shift rarely happens without a compelling business case for change supported by resources, specific expectations and clear accountabilities.

There will be winners—and losers—when it comes to maintenance changes fueled by unrelenting external forces. The losers will struggle as they hold fast to traditions. The winners will waste no time in embracing fundamental and sweeping changes in the business perception of maintenance and the way maintenance is performed.

We, as maintenance professionals, must be unyielding, outspoken advocates of a major change in the approach to industrial and facilities maintenance, regardless of our positions in business, organizations or the world of maintenance and reliability. We also must be willing to learn from those who have already successfully shifted their maintenance paradigms.