Maintenance Management – Deployment Challenges

What is maintenance management?

First of all, let’s define what maintenance management deployment is. Imagine that in the maintenance department each employee does what he or she “thinks” is correct or enforce in the machines’ stuck knowledge that were used many years ago without proper updates. The company would have a serious problem, because it would be a department without the appropriate direction to decision making. So, that is where the manager enters.

The maintenance manager is the one who has the position of directing all the department’s decisions. He or she appraises the best strategies, oversees the maintenance professionals’ actions, analyzes the performance indicators to decide the best maintenance plans used, corrective, preventive, and predictive. Therefore, the department’s success depends on good maintenance management, and consequently, of the company.

Benefits of the maintenance management

The maintenance manager is the one who has the function of directing all decisions in the department. He or she evaluates the best strategies, oversees the maintenance workers actions, analyzes performance indicators to decide the best maintenance plan to be used, whether corrective, preventive, predictive, etc. Thus, the success of this department is determined by a great maintenance management, and so the company.

Maintenance management advantages

Appropriate and efficient maintenance management has a direct influence on the company’s manufacture. Have you ever thought your equipment would stop right in the middle of a big request? Compliance with the contract and even the equipment quality may be compromised. Because of that, well-structured maintenance management is so important for the company. And other advantages are:

• Costs and failures reduction in maintenance;
• Process optimizations;
• Manufacturer downtime reduction;
• Accidents reduction;
• Increase equipment lifespan;
• Better control of quality indicators;
• Complete structuring of planning;
• Correct direction of interventions in the equipment, among others.

Having a maintenance manager with knowledge could mean a big step for that department because all decisions will be made with technical knowledge and will bring this and other advantages for your business.

The most common challenges of maintenance manager

The maintenance managers face challenges that in some points even impact their strategies. It is a challenging area because the result of good maintenance work is reflected in the machines availability, profitability, employee security, product quality, etc. Maintenance managers face some challenges, even with the advent of technology. For example:

• Lack of process automation: yes, in the age of technology there are still companies that do not adapt technology to automate their processes. Managers often need to work with data laid out in spreadsheets. This compromises data reliability and can put in question the manager’s decisions.
• Lack of staff training: the lack of staff training could lead to reflexes such as asset delays of new technologies for example. In a highly competitive market, managers who do not have qualified staff face problems because of this decision making.
• Lack of maintenance history: the lack of reliable database makes it difficult for the maintenance manager to build solid strategies:
• Lack of precise reports: completing the item below, lack of maintenance reports makes it difficult to get reliable reports for analysis and performance indicators control, which compromises the long-term results of the maintenance department.

There are other challenges day by day for the maintenance manager, according to which company reality and the maintenance type used. Therefore, having efficient management is a department necessity and deployment also faces challenges that should be resolved to achieve an efficient maintenance department.

Challenges in maintenance management deployment

After understanding that every company has an efficient maintenance management to achieve suitable results, come the deployment challenges. Every process through several stages and the challenges needs to be faced so that management is successfully deployed. Among the most common, we can mention:

• Preventive maintenance:

Preventive maintenances are expensive and difficult of schedule: this is a common thought in the environment where just are performed corrective maintenance, because, usually, they believe that stop an equipment to perform preventive maintenance are expensive and unfeasible. This is not true. Expensive is to count on luck to produce and guarantee the equipment availability.

However, maintenance downtimes can be scheduled in advance and their execution dates can and should be discussed with other departments, with the assistance of a maintenance schedule.

In places where there is little or no computerization, people usually spend hours to get and analyze information. There is no point in a large volume of information if it is static or difficult to understand.

• Specialist Software

With specialist software in maintenance, charts, reports and maintenance indicators are received in seconds.

Even if the costs of deployment of maintenance specialist software can be high, one of the benefits of deployment maintenance specialist software is cost reduction. In some cases, this cost reduction exceeds 50%! In a short time, the deployment costs will be paid only with the reduction of costs.

In addition, there are benefits with the increased manufacture and with the longest equipment durability.

Maintenance specialist software is not over-the-counter software, so there is a follow-up.

However, the information must be in real time, from anywhere: for greater dynamism in maintenance management, count on maintenance specialist software that works with mobile solutions, streamlining and allowing mobility in maintenance.

These challenges in maintenance management can be overcome with the help of a specialist maintenance software and with due importance to the staff qualification.