Putting Maintenance at The Heart of Operational Excellence

• Improve Asset Care

• Refine Working Methods: Develop and test processes to make it easy to do things right, difficult to do wrong, and simple to learn.

• Develop Skills: Ensuring new methods become second nature.

• Simplify Work Routines: Establish safe, easy to apply work routines that guarantee compliance.

The Benefits: More Than Just Uptime

Adopting this holistic approach to maintenance yields significant gains:

• Enhanced Yield and Increased Capacity: Optimised processes result in higher production volumes.

• Reduced Quality Defects: Improved maintenance practices lead to fewer errors and rework.

• Lower Energy and Utility Costs: More efficient operations reduce energy consumption per unit.

• Operational Efficiency: Releasing operator time from routine tasks allows the front-line team to focus on strategic day-to-day management.

The enhanced operational day to day performance directly impacts on several key operational metrics:

• Daily Management:
  Reduced need for team leaders to intervene as operations become more self-sustaining.

• Front Line Productivity:
  Systematic problem resolution minimises accelerated wear and mitigates the causes of human error.

• Policy Deployment:
  Embedding improvement processes into the fabric of the organisation helps deliver broader business goals

Yet, many organisations miss out on these benefits because their performance management processes focus solely on today’s output—ignoring the longer-term gains embedded in proactive maintenance.

In leading organisations, maintenance is not just a support function—it’s a strategic driver of operational excellence. By understanding the causal effects of asset performance, these organisations systematically reduce both unplanned and planned interventions. Consider how your approach to maintenance compares with the best practices of well-respected, award-winning manufacturing operations:

1. Process Control:
   Are you satisfied with low levels of effectiveness, or are cross-functional leaders engaged in a roadmap to optimise operational processes?

2. Work Control:
   Do you have a single, comprehensive Plan for Every Asset (PFEA) that clearly outlines cross-functional accountabilities for asset care and correct operation? Is it routinely reviewed and updated to enhance safety, reliability, ease of use, and maintainability?

3. Planning:
   Are there standard ways of working for production and maintenance routines, is feedback captured to refine work routines and release resources to work on problem hot spots.

If the answer to any of these is negative, then read the next article on how to Transform Operational Performance by putting maintenance at the heart of Operational Excellence.

Imagine the production line grinds to a halt because a chain drive has failed. The engineer quickly replaces the chain and drive, and production restarts. But what happens next?

In many cases, the two main causes of breakdowns—poor equipment condition and human error—remain unaddressed. Both issues can be eliminated when accountability is clear and a structured process is in place to ensure problems never recur.

The solution lies in embedding maintenance into the fabric of operational excellence to: