Many maintenance planners are still ill-equipped today to effectively schedule work orders to improve plant performance. Instead the work, and often not the most important work, is scheduled last minute for the person yelling the loudest. There’s a better way.
Using a planned preventative maintenance program is one of the many ways managers have been able to lower costs across a facility while simultaneously increasing the standard of work safety and decreasing the amount of employee downtime. Reactive maintenance, waiting for full equipment failure before scheduling repairs, shows a lack of foresight on behalf of the manager and will end up costing the company significantly more than preplanning and preprogrammed maintenance.
Effective maintenance management is difficult to achieve without experience and a fundamental understanding of every moving piece in the facility. Maintenance and Operations need to be on the same page and both taken into consideration when planning out a successful strategy that does not hinder production.
Finding ways to boost the overall efficiency of workers is constantly on the mind of every manger, regardless of the type of facility they run. Unnecessary downtime will inevitably lead to a loss in production which can have a serious effect on the company's profit margins.
The scheduling process is imperative to successful maintenance management. Jobs need to completed in a satisfactory manner and enough time needs to be allocated so that the equipment maintenance can be properly handled. As the economy rebounds and the business gets busier, it can become very easy to make any of these common scheduling mistakes.
