5 costly maintenance myths that are sabotaging your reliability goals — and how to debunk them
Key takeaways
- Proactive maintenance saves money and boosts safety, while delaying it risks catastrophic failures and lost profits.
- More PMs don't mean better reliability—optimize tasks to address real failure modes and avoid over-maintenance.
- New equipment needs vigilant maintenance early on due to high risks of installation errors and early-life failures.
- Boost wrench time with better planning before hiring more techs; optimize existing resources for higher efficiency.
In our world of maintenance and reliability, it seems persistent myths continue to undermine thought processes and ultimately impact plant performance. While these misconceptions stem from well-intentioned approaches passed down over time, they can lead to poor decision-making, excessive costs, and higher levels of equipment failure. This column evaluates five common myths that maintenance personnel encounter and share some practical truths to shift your thinking, should you or your management subscribe to them.
Myth: “We can’t afford downtime for maintenance.”
Truth: Proactive maintenance is an investment, not an expense.
Planned downtime costs money, and there is an opportunity cost, as no saleable products are being produced, especially in capacity constrained environments. Yet, you must maintain the assets. When unplanned downtime occurs, costs rise, and profit is lost forever. And, planned maintenance is inherently safer than reactive unplanned events.
When maintenance is delayed in the interest of keeping production running, this short-term mindset often backfires. For example, a plant delayed a scheduled inspection to meet a production target. The equipment failed catastrophically during a peak shift, resulting in 16 hours of downtime, lost product, and overtime costs exceeding $150,000. In contrast, the planned maintenance would have taken just two hours on a weekend at minimal cost.
Myth: “More PMs equals better reliability.”
Truth: The key is not frequency, but function.
In fact, 40 to 60% of existing PM activities often add little value, because they fail to address the likely failure modes. Also, consider that 70% of failures are self-induced. So, disturbing an otherwise stable system with intrusive PMs, can introduce failures. One manufacturing facility used OEM recommendations for PM tasks, including weekly inspections for components that rarely fail. After a review based on failure modes and consequences, the team eliminated 35% of tasks.
Many organizations strive for 80% or more labor hours dedicated to PMs, when in fact, world-class organizations target 30% of their hours on PMs. Focus PM efforts on addressing the likely failure modes based on the asset’s operating context.
Myth: “New equipment needs less maintenance.”
Truth: New assets are vulnerable to early-life failures due to improper installation and commissioning.
The occurrence of “infant mortality” is well-documented. Also, personnel often are not well-trained in the new equipment and lack standard work procedures, which cause failures. A chemical plant installed a pump system without following standard commissioning protocols. Less than two weeks later, a misaligned shaft led to bearing failure. Another site suffered a bearing failure when a grease fitting was missed on the PM task list. It’s common to find new line additions not being captured completely in the computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) equipment hierarchy, and with no assets defined, PM procedures are missing, especially if trained personnel transfer away from the site.
Myth: “We need more maintenance technicians.”
Truth: Before hiring, examine how effectively current resources are used.
Management frowns on adding headcount, and rightly so. Most plants operate at 25 to 35% wrench time, and with proper planning and scheduling, this can nearly be doubled. Couple that number with non-value-added PM tasks that waste precious technician resources.
A packaging facility struggling with overdue work orders discovered that technicians spent most of their time waiting on parts, tools, or access to the equipment. After implementing a dedicated planner role, wrench time jumped from 30 to 55% without adding staff, and reduced overtime 20% to boot. Now, they are focusing on preventive maintenance optimization (PMO) for even more success.
Myth: “Our CMMS gives us all the data we need to drive reliability.”
Truth: Without proper asset hierarchies, failure codes, and work order discipline, reports are misleading at best.
Ever notice how the metrics always seem to rise, yet performance remains the same or worse? The value of a CMMS depends entirely on the system configuration and the quality of the data entered. A beverage company believed their CMMS reports showed top asset offenders and the reasons for failure. But a deeper audit revealed that technicians were defaulting to specific failure codes for ease of work order entry. Garbage in, garbage out. After standardizing the asset hierarchy using improved parent-child relationships and training personnel on accurate failure reporting, the data began to support informed decision-making. The CMMS is a powerful tool when utilized in the right way.
Are you ready to take the next steps? Some of the most dangerous words in a plant are “We’ve done it that way for the last twenty years.” Take a hard look at your current practices. Are your PMs aligned to real failure modes? Is your CMMS providing insight or just noise? Could better planning improve productivity more than more people?
