Building better maintenance teams: How organizational theory informs manufacturing reliability
Key takeaways
- Skilled staffing—not rigid rules—is key to effective maintenance team coordination.
- It turns out that maintenance teams thrive as "professional bureaucracies" with judgment-driven execution.
- Hiring and training craftspersons well ensures long-term maintenance stability.
- Support staff like planners must have strong skills to empower field technicians.
With great respect and reference to Henry Mintzberg1, this article applies his technical names for organizational structures and concepts to our maintenance teams. Mintzberg’s work unlocked the door for me to get planning “working.” It led to my Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Handbook, McGraw-Hill’s continuing best-selling reliability book.
Organizations of all types are good at specializing, but poor at coordinating. Coordination glues together the efforts of the specialized functions, and Mintzberg defines five primary coordination mechanisms available for teams to use. Using the correct primary coordinating type makes the organization stable (effective and enduring). Using the incorrect primary coordination makes the organization unstable (ineffective and soon to fail). Unfortunately, most companies around the world have a significant reorganization every five years. And again, they reorganize…
Our primary coordination mechanism for maintenance should be having skilled professionals, and not rules. Here’s an example from the movies: after having a “chat” with the captain, the captured damsel of The Pirates of the Caribbean ghost ship demands she be released in accordance with the ‘Code of the Pirates’ which declares: “No hostages are taken during a parley.” The ghost ship captain patiently explains “The ‘Code of the Pirates’ are not so much as rules as they are guidelines, and you are not going anywhere!” So, while having plans and procedures, maintenance craftspersons must also exercise their judgment.
The rest of this column outlines Mintzberg’s five coordinating types, and explains why the performance of maintenance organizations is best coordinated by paying careful attention to staffing, that is hiring and training for skills.
How to align coordinating type with individual work teams
The proper form of an organization along with the proper coordinating type depends on the complexity and rate of change of both the technology and environment of the business. Smaller groups within a larger group may even need different organization types with matching coordinating types. The same group might employ a number of different coordinating types, but the proper type must be dominant to ensure stability.
One organizational form is called an adhocracy and the proper coordinating type is mutual adjustment. A small group in normal operation or any size group in a crisis coordinates with each other in frequent meetings, always touching base with everyone.
Another form, a group with “low” technology in a rapidly changing environment, operates best as a simple form organization with a direct supervision type of coordination: “Do this…Now do that.” Everyone is continually attentive to the boss.
A group with “higher” technology with a low rate of technology change and low rate of environmental change operates best as a machine bureaucracy. The proper matching coordinating type is rules (standardization of work processes). A key part of the organization is the rule makers (the technostructure). Think of an automobile assembly line. The rule makers have established exactly what each worker does on the line.
A group with higher technology with a higher rate of change and also a high rate of environmental change operates best as a professional bureaucracy form. The proper coordinating type is staffing: emphasizing hiring and training for skills (standardization of skills). A key part of the organization is the persons actually doing the work (the operating core). Think of doctors, always exercising their judgment and skill with different patients having new problems along with changing medical treatments. Another key part here is the support staff which performs functions such as payroll or accounting designed to keep the operating core busy applying its expertise.
Finally, a larger group over a large area or many functions operates best as a divisional form. The proper coordinating type is metrics or key process indicators (KPIs) (standardization of outputs). Think of a company with several plants: “What was the MTBF of the Jacksonville plant? What was the profitability of the Atlanta store?”
Which coordinating type is best for my maintenance team?
The closest organizational match for maintenance teams is “professional bureaucracy,” so our primary coordinating type should be staffing. Maintenance has fairly complex technology that is changing, but not at a crisis rate. The environment also changes continually, but also not always in crisis. Maintenance performs different tasks on different days across a broad spectrum of situations and assets, some routine, but many requiring on the spot judgment.
Therefore, to have the most stable (most effective and enduring) maintenance effort, we should primarily emphasize hiring, training, and retention of skilled craftspersons. (Note: this is not to say we do not want great plans and procedures. Rather we want craftspersons to make judgments during execution and contribute to betterment of plans and procedures.)
Accordingly, planners and schedulers fall into the key area of support staff to provide the skilled craftspersons with work request triage (work scoping and plan head starts), craft historian help (for different assets with plans that grow better over time), and weekly backlog research (to bundle together the best selection of work) for supervisors. And this support staff of planners and schedulers is also best coordinated with staffing. Pay particular attention to having planners and schedulers with superior communication and organizing skills. Craft skills are also a plus for street credibility.
The best maintenance groups operate as a professional bureaucracy. They give top attention to hiring and training for craftspersons. They encourage them to leverage their skills and judgments during work execution. They also staff the planning and scheduling group with skilled persons to support the craftspersons. Don’t settle for good. Be great! Turn those pirates loose!
(1) Mintzberg, Henry (1983). Structure in Fives: Designing Effective Organizations. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
