Yes it's that time of year - no I don't mean Thanksgiving or Macy's Parade - not even Christmas or New Years ! What I'm talking about is getting the maintenance plan and budget ready for next year. What are you going to base the plan and budget on? Will it be last year plus 2% or what you think you can get past the finance department?
How about we take another approach?
First let's ask some questions,
What are the things that keep you awake at night?
What do you have to explain to your boss on a regular basis
These should be easy questions for you to answer - but let's ask some that may be a little bit more difficult!
What is your schedule compliance - corrective and PMs - and more importantly why are they what they are?
What failure modes are costing you the most money and again - why?
Are your people performing to the height of their capability - if not why?
If you can answer the difficult questions then you've just formed the basis for your training plan for next year. Obviously you want to focus on getting the knowledge and training to the people who need it - as Jim Collins said - get the right people sitting in the right seat on the right bus! If your compliance is not what you want then maybe you need some planning and scheduling training or if the problem is not with your planning but with how the rest of your plant co-operate maybe there should be some leadership training!
Does your CMMS allow you to easily know which failure modes are the ones you MUST address? if not then it might be some understanding of how and what your CMMS can do, that you need.
Then we get to the biggest challenge any maintenance manager will face - people! Do you find that you just can't seem to motivate some of the people working with you? Are there communication issues that you need to address? Is it difficult to get people to take on responsibilities - or even worse do you have difficulty giving up control? There is no maintenance organization in the world that will succeed unless there is co-operation and involvement - if you're not sure how to get that - then maybe it's leadership training that's required
The point of this blog is that you should be evaluating your performance, figuring out what is causing you problems, costing you money and should be the focus of your efforts for the upcoming year. The budget should be a result - not the reason. If you address the problems you discover then you will be on the road to becoming more effective and efficient and the budget will show the results of this.