Focus on Reliability

Many times, we are asked to visit organizations with a view to identifying where the biggest challenges to a successful maintenance and reliability lie. Quite often we are shown where the problems lie but there is no real understanding of ‘why’ they exist. There is one situation that arises in pretty much every organization in some form or other and that’s a disconnect between maintenance and the procurement or storeroom functions. There are many variations on who does what in this function and even who owns what, far too many for me to go into every scenario, so for the sake of this blog I’m going to treat them as three separate functions and you can fit them to your situation.

Still the most challenging topic most companies face in maintenance and reliability is one of leadership. Many organizations feel that they are not achieving the effectiveness and efficiency they believe they should due to a lack of understanding of leadership. The one thing that has stood out in my recent visits to organizations to help with this challenge has been the lack of a fundamental of leadership – managing. The interesting part is that each organization recognized they needed work on things like motivation, inspiration, involvement, engagement etc. but none recognized that their structure and systems for managing were broken. If we don’t have the systems in place to manage and control how do we expect to demonstrate those afore-mentioned traits of leaders? We need to remember that a good manager may be a good leader, but good leaders MUST be good managers. Too often we think of leadership in the philosophical terms that were mentioned but as the leadership guru Peter Drucker’s “Effective leadership is not about making speeches and being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.”

Having Leadership and Supervision issues at your site?  Want to make a change ? Let us bring our Maintenance Leadership and Supervision Course to you.   

How many times have you walked around a hardware store or a kitchen store and seen a tool or instrument that just made you shake your head and say to yourself ‘Wow if I’d had that when I tried to do…………………………….. life would have been so much easier!’

Over the years I’ve had many conversations with organizations around KPIs – what they are, and equally as important, why they are. When I’ve asked why people measure what they do, I have received several different answers, ranging from:

Most organizations these days have some form of CMMS – Computerized Maintenance Management System – whether it’s a home based Access system or it’s a full blown EAM – Enterprise Asset Management System – and many stops in between. Now I think it’s fair to assume that people have got at least part of the idea of a CMMS right. Unfortunately it’s only the Computerized and System that has been implemented. Most have forgotten the Maintenance Management part of the acronym! I visit many sites and talk with many people and to be honest, I am no longer surprised to see that people use their CMMS to manage their work orders – and only that.