Modernizing Maintenance

What does modernizing maintenance mean? It’s proper maintenance with limited interruptions to operations. To put it simply, it’s the practice of moving your maintenance department out of reactive maintenance and into preventative and even predictive maintenance strategies. With the help of Industry 4.0 tools and strategies, from Computerized Maintenance Software Systems (CMMS) and sensors to root cause analysis and asset criticality analysis, you’ll be able to build a plan to leave legacy systems behind and move into modern maintenance.

There are many different approaches you can take when it comes to modernizing your maintenance department. It all starts with the decision to do so. Then what? Ask yourself why you want to and where you want to end up. Your company could be looking at future expansions, reducing maintenance costs, improving operations, and more.  These are all good reasons that you’ll want to modernize your department and need to do so. Expansions will fail if your department isn’t ready for the workload, nor can you improve operations if you’re stuck in reactive maintenance.

You could simply want to make the lives of you and your employees easier, which is easier said than done, but it can happen. Modernizing your maintenance won’t happen overnight. It takes setting goals that align with corporate goals, updating any training you or your team may need, putting together a strategy that makes sense, putting your plan in action, and then reviewing and revising as you go.

Now that we have gotten into the why behind modernizing your maintenance department, let’s look at what it is and how it can help achieve your goals. Proper maintenance can look a little different from company to company, but at the end of the day, it’s all about keeping your assets running at their best throughout their expected life cycle. The best and simplest way to achieve that is by implementing a CMMS properly (note I said properly—that’s the most important part; don’t skimp on the implementation process and training on the program!) into your department, setting up a preventative maintenance program, and continually assessing your department and its goals. That may sound like a lot, but once you get into the groove of using these methods, you’ll see how much easier your department runs.

Over the course of the next 12 months, we will dissect each of these components with a series of blogs that I have put together with the help of my team. These informational blogs will help you take your plan to the next level—regardless of where you are in your journey—and include the following:

• Reducing waste
• Determining which reports in MaintiMizer™ to use based on your goals
• Learning how to utilize MaintiMizer™ 5.0 widgets
• Deciding why and how to use the data you get from those reports
• Improving employee retention
• Establishing asset criticality and asset hierarchy

Once you start implementing modern maintenance, the benefits will start rolling in. Benefits include better communication and accountability within your team, a better organized workflow, fewer asset failures and overtime hours, lower employee turnover, and a happier C-suite. All of this makes your organization and department a better place to work. Follow along with us over the next 12 months to get your department moving in the right direction.