Every maintenance manager is subjected to certain pressures concerning uptime, output, expenditure, skills, people and compliance. Poor productivity is almost always the result of poor planning. Proper maintenance planning is one of the ways to improve maintenance team productivity. Another way to improve productivity is by using CMMS or other software, but more on that later.
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Businesses with slow-to-adapt maintenance teams face rising production costs and shrinking profitability. These organizations will have a high turnover of maintenance staff, and it is not uncommon for the maintenance manager to be the recipient of late-night calls, long hours and a sense of never making any progress.
It is worth noting that the typical wrench time range is between 25% and 30%. You could increase it to more than 50% by implementing the following practices, which would significantly improve productivity and streamline operations.
Improve Maintenance Team Productivity
Why is it important to keep the maintenance team productive? The answer is simple: maintenance keeps your factory and production running smoothly. Thus, it is essential to keep the maintenance team’s performance in check to support your organization as well.
1. Establish a Common Goal
Your company’s vision, mission and values should serve as the foundational business language and be inspiring enough to engage and motivate all employees.
It is usually beyond the scope of the maintenance team to develop and communicate such information. What can be done is to develop a roadmap for the maintenance department that defines specific standards and goals.
Given that the majority of maintenance teams are composed of analytical, left-brain thinkers, this qualitative roadmap will serve as a link between the department vision and the actual tactics to be used to achieve it. This roadmap can be used to articulate what the future looks like in terms of measurable numbers, and it may also include goals like increasing uptime and lowering turnover.
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2. Use CMMS and Information Management
The selection and implementation of an effective computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is critical to the team’s success. Implementing CMMS allows for improved communication among team members. CMMS, in conjunction with a preventive maintenance system, assists the maintenance team in preparing for emergency situations.
However, great teams can function without the use of any computerized systems at all. What matters is that the team understands what information is required and how it can be gathered, organized and used. At its core, most property maintenance software is only intended to format and output the data that has been entered into it (poor information in, useless instructions out).
3. Implement Preventive Maintenance Planning
One of the best ways to improve the maintenance team’s productivity is to set a principle of planning maintenance activities beforehand.
Preventive maintenance aids in the development of one’s level of thinking, skills and management abilities. Reactive maintenance is more stressful, necessitates immediate action and requires no planning. Preventive maintenance, on the other hand, is less stressful, prevents asset failure and involves planning so team members are less stressed and work more effectively, resulting in higher productivity.
Creating data-rich work order templates is an excellent idea if you want your PM planning to produce results. Good CMMS systems come with pre-defined or customizable templates to add details such as asset maintenance and repair histories, checklists, stepwise instructions, parts and materials, and OM manuals, images and schematics. With templates in place, it will be easy for operators to add important information into work orders in a few clicks.
CMMS systems also come with auto generated reports that offer you an understanding of all the things you’re doing right and wrong in an comprehensible way. Reports look into KPIs, performance metrics and overall productivity of your facility to help you identify areas for improvement.
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4. Measure Performance and Improve
The first complaint facility managers always hear when it comes to key performance indicators (KPI) is that there are already too many. Workers are usually correct. The issue is some managers misapply performance metrics.
Instead of selecting measures under the worker’s control that can be used to identify areas of improvement toward the company’s strategic goals, the manager employs the KPI framework as a reporting tool to monitor actions that are a prerequisite for the job rather than a measure of improvement.
Setting relevant KPIs that each employee can own and assume accountability for should be a tailored and deliberate process rather than a list of role requirements.
While measuring KPIs is one aspect in measuring performance, SOPs offer more in terms of standardization and enable facility managers to check whether employees are doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing. The benefit of having standard operating procedures is that even if one task is done by different people, every person will do it the same way.
Having clear SOPs for all maintenance activities has another advantage: it helps workers learn new skills. Managers can also save time in bringing senior officials to explain processes to new employees. Instead they can simply look at the details such as materials, parts, safety hazards and step-by-step instructions for inspections.
5. Support and Develop Your Maintenance Team
Disengaged workers can cost you more in terms of productivity, efficiency and achieving goals. According to a Gallup report in 2021, only 39% of employees are engaged in the workplace in the U.S, although a huge jump from 36% in 2020. In the same report, statistics show that almost 15% of employees are actively disengaged at work. Actively disengaged employees report having miserable work experiences and might also spread negativity to other employees.
Employee disengagement also affects retention and attrition rates. Among actively disengaged workers 74% were looking for new opportunities. Engage employees switch jobs too but at a much lower rate than disengaged ones.
Another way to support and develop your team is to provide them with flexible work options. According to another study by Gallup, engagement among “hybrid” employees is higher than those commuting to the workplace. As of January 2021, 44% of employees working from home would prefer that or “hybrid” working in the future too.
Employees want to be heard and understood, therefore, it is important for them to be involved and engaged. Establish a feedback loop where employees can voice their concerns and provide thoughtful inputs on what’s going on and what can be improved.
Not only this, a mindset for continuous improvement can also do wonders to increase the morale of your team. Make the team look at challenges as opportunities to do something better than what they did before. Evaluate your efforts every few months to see if the change is working. Employees need to feel and be shown that their employer cares about their wellbeing and career development.
Conclusion
Nowadays, maintenance teams are more than just repair crews. They play a proactive role in optimizing processes and ensuring proper equipment functioning, instead of just arriving at the last moment after the damage has been done.
Facility managers should start looking at maintenance management from a fresh perspective. They should consider themselves and the maintenance team as thought leaders who drive the modernization of the plant.
These are just a few ideas we came up with to improve maintenance team productivity. Can you think of more? Let us know in the comments!