Maintenance and Reliability for Managers

Strategic Pathways: Crafting Your Roadmap to Success

The Power of Education in Maintenance and Reliability

Reminder to the maintenance managers seeking "reliability": - Behind every successful reliability program are hard lessons from unplanned downtime. - People often don't implement best practices because they "need more resources," but the best resource is doing more with what you have. - The biggest win from visiting world-class manufacturing plants is... you realize their equipment isn't better than yours. - Reactive teams want quick fixes. Average teams want recognition. But reliability leaders want accountability. Remember: 40-60% of current PMs add no value. Planned work is safer work. And the PF curve doesn't care about your excuses. Let's crush unplanned downtime in 2025.

6 ways to change your relationship with maintenance: If you want reliability, most teams don't speak the right language... 1. The 80/20 Rule of Reliability 20% of assets cause 80% of downtime. Your team feels the same accomplishment completing busywork PMs as addressing critical failure modes. 2. Inversion Thinking Define what failures are completely unacceptable - your "reliability anti-goals." 3. Occam's Razor Organizations love complexity (IIoT, machine learning). But fundamentals work better (proper hierarchy, accurate failure codes, realistic PM intervals). 4. Break the Reactive Cycle Reliability flows to planning, not emergency response. 5. Find Your Reliability Why Winning whys: - "So our plant stays competitive and jobs remain secure" - "Because planned work is safer work" 6. Learn the language of reliability: - Identify failure modes - Plan strategically - Execute consistently - Learn continuously

Bridging the Communication Gap in Organizations

Essential Practices for Maintenance Storeroom Management

7 reframes NEEDED for maintenance managers to become reliability leaders: 1. You'll never be a reliability leader if you can't break the reactive maintenance cycle first. Learn to prioritize planned work over firefighting. 2. Anyone can identify equipment problems - leaders identify failure modes and develop strategies. When highlighting a failure, ALWAYS have both short-term and long-term solutions ready. Reduce production delays by proactively planning maintenance windows. 3. Maintenance departments that blame production for equipment failures stay stuck. Instead of fixating on operator errors or a lack of equipment access, ask what YOU can do to make equipment more reliable, then partner with operators to maintain it. 4. Re-frame budget requests to align with business outcomes. Don't just ask for more maintenance dollars, say, "If we implement this PM optimization, we can reduce downtime by 25% and increase production capacity." 5. Almost every reliability program has a database of repetitive failures that never get properly addressed. Attack these "bad actors" systematically, beginning with critical assets that impact production most. 6. Share credit for reliability improvements, even when your team drove them. Own equipment failures, even when other departments contributed. Build cross-functional partnerships focused on overall equipment effectiveness. 7. Become too valuable to operate without. Learn the PF curve. Study both production processes and maintenance best practices. Implement reliability strategies that drive bottom-line impact. Become the person plant managers rely on, not just call when things break down. #Reliability #Leadership

Unconventional traits of successful maintenance and reliability leaders: - They've spent nights and weekends troubleshooting catastrophic failures and realized there was a better way. - They challenge the "we've done it this way for 20 years" mentality and implement proven practices even when unpopular. - Behind every successful reliability program is a maintenance manager who was tired of being blamed in morning production meetings. - Their mindset: maintenance can't prevent all failures but can choose to be intolerant of repetitive failures. - They're data-driven. They track schedule breakers, schedule compliance, and mean time between failures religiously. - They don't have all the answers, but they understand that 70% of failures are self-induced (40% from human error). - The best reliability professionals have toured multiple facilities and learned across industries. - They've changed work execution practices that average 25-35% wrench time to achieving 50%+ through more effective planning and scheduling. What would you add from your reliability journey? #Maintenance #Reliability #MaintenancePlanning

The best maintenance advice that no one follows: - Fix potential failures before they become functional failures - Educate operators as the first line of equipment defense - Implement toolbox training to share specialized skills across shifts - Don't bypass the storeroom with direct purchase orders - Create proper parent-child relationships in your CMMS - Planned work is safer work - break the reactive cycle In nearly every plant I visit, these fundamentals get overlooked while organizations chase the latest predictive technology or management trend. Yet the most significant improvements come from mastering these basics. What's consistently amazing is watching organizations reduce maintenance costs by 50% while improving schedule attainment from near 0 to 78% by simply following these principles. What maintenance fundamentals would you add to this list?

Optimizing Inventory Management: The Risks of Direct Purchases