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Posted On: 03/01/2007

Maintenance Tip: Assessing against known best practices

PlantServices.com

By Ricky Smith

The biggest challenge organizations face is to know the status of their current maintenance and reliability process and developing a plan to close the gap between current and desired performance. Assessing the status of maintenance and reliability will reveal real problem areas which can provide some amazing results. An assessment must compare a maintenance and reliability process against known “best practices”.  As part of an assessment one must know how much money is lost because the organization does not apply “best practices”.

A maintenance and reliability assessment does not assess the maintenance organization but the maintenance and reliability process.  Having been involved in over 300 maintenance assessments I can tell you most maintenance professionals will not agree with all results. We as humans do not agree with things we do not understand or that threaten what we consider safe. I think most professionals would however agree the problems faced by a maintenance organization must be solved and understand the first step to solving a problem is identifying the real problem. Albert Einstein once said:

“The problems we face cannot be solved with the same level of thinking we had when they were created”

Many times I recommend maintenance and operations management attends training in “best practices” in order to prepare them for an assessment. If you would like a copy of an abbreviated maintenance and reliability assessment or recommendation where to receive “best practices” training send me an email at ricky-smith@comcast.net.