7 Key Steps to an Effective Maintenance Management Plan | Comparesoft

7 Key Steps to an Effective Maintenance

Management Plan

Reduced downtime leads to higher profits and more maintenance

Published leads to lower downtime, but why do so many companies find it
17th Dec 2019

Topics
difficult to produce an effective maintenance management plan?
CMMS,
Maintenance
Management
Pressure on budgets and resources leads to too much effort spent
keeping production going than investing in tune-ups. Grand
maintenance strategy plans get put on hold to deal with the next
big order. Businesses fall back on reactive maintenance out of
necessity. Assessing the true cost of reactive maintenance is
essential when deciding how much to invest in an improved
maintenance strategy.

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7 Key Steps to an Effective Maintenance Management Plan | Comparesoft

One study estimates that in the long-term, reactive maintenance

costs 2-5 times more than proactive (combining preventive and
predictive) maintenance. Another states that teams spend 35-45%
of their time on reactive maintenance, compared to the industry
rule-of-thumb of 20%. What steps should a maintenance leader
take to improve their maintenance strategy?

The Different Types of Maintenance

Management

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Corrective/Reactive Maintenance
Corrective and reactive maintenance are usually grouped
together. Both tend to be unplanned and sporadic in nature, with
the goal of identifying, isolating, and fixing a fault. Reactive
maintenance involves rectifying a fault that has caused a failure
of the equipment, e.g. a stopped production line. Reactive
maintenance actions will get the piece of equipment running
again, but does not mean it will be running optimally.

Corrective maintenance occurs to fix a fault that has been

identified but is not (yet) causing the system to run out of
acceptable ranges. A good example of this could be replacing an
overly sensitive sensor.

In the short-term, costs are low and planning is minimal. In the

long-term, however, downtime costs increase as well as asset
lifetime decreases and unplanned additional costs spiral. This
does not mean that a corrective or reactive maintenance
management plan is always the wrong choice. If the failure of a
piece of equipment will not cause downtime or safety risks, the
extra cost of preventive maintenance may not be worth the
investment.

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Download Infographic

Preventive Maintenance
Preventive maintenance involves periodic checkups with the
intention of preventing failures before they happen. Preventive
maintenance can use time intervals, usage intervals, or condition-
based through performance and parameter monitoring. Preventive
maintenance typically involves planned downtime for servicing
or replacing a component.

Some preventive maintenance is mandatory, according to legal

regulations or contract conditions. On the one hand, preventive

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maintenance improves fault detection and reduces reactive

maintenance actions. For usage or time-based intervals, preparing
a maintenance schedule does not require any complicated
software. On the other hand, such a schedule can become
redundant and costly, leading to “over-maintenance”.

Predictive Maintenance
A predictive maintenance management plan aims to stop the
“over-maintenance” of preventive methods performing
maintenance only when it is necessary. This is done by
monitoring equipment conditions with techniques such as:

Vibration analysis – vibrations can indicate imminent failure

Acoustic analysis – to detect liquid or gas leaks
Oil analysis – oil particle size can determine equipment state
Infrared thermography – to detect unusually high temperatures

Effective predictive maintenance leads to a ‘Just In Time’

maintenance management plan which maximises equipment
availability in relation to maintenance time. It is the
recommended option for critical assets with sporadic or
unpredictable failure intervals. However, it requires extensive
monitoring and monitoring equipment. This can be both time-
consuming and unaffordable for many businesses. With the rise
of the Internet of Things and digitalisation, effective predictive
maintenance is more achievable than ever before.

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Read more: How Maintenance Management Software Betters

Business

Prescriptive Maintenance
The latest development in maintenance strategies is only a few
years old. Predictive maintenance uses equipment condition to
recommend the optimum time for maintenance. Prescriptive
maintenance, however, also analyses millions of data points to
determine the best course of action.

Predictive maintenance may tell you that when a component is

likely to fail according to its temperature profile. Prescriptive
analysis, however, could tell you that a 10% drop in pressure
could give you 50% more running time before failure.
Prescriptive maintenance is still in its initial stages. Nevertheless,
improved artificial intelligence and machine learning make it an
area of great potential.

Reliability-Centred Maintenance
Reliability-centred maintenance is a business-wide strategy. It
can incorporate all of the types mentioned above. It aims to
optimise maintenance strategy – all pieces of equipment should
safely fulfil their function in the most cost-effective way.
Effectively, reliability-centred maintenance involves constant
improvement of a business’s overall maintenance management
strategy.

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The 7 Key Steps to an Effective

Maintenance Management Plan

1. Prioritise the Reasons for Downtime

The first step of any change in strategy is understanding what you

are working with. In order to successfully transition to a more
efficient maintenance strategy, you must gather data on the
current state of affairs.

Assess your current level of mean time between failure (MTBF),

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mean time to repair (MTTR), spare part expenditure, machine

downtime, equipment usage and technician response time. If you
have already invested in computerised maintenance management
solution (CMMS) software, this step will be easier than if you
have been relying on spreadsheets or manual methods.

With this information in hand, you can calculate the cost of one
hour of downtime. One hour of downtime of a critical asset will
be far more expensive than one hour of downtime for a less
essential machine. One way to better assess current downtime is
to calculate average downtime cost per hour for inessential,
average, and critical components.

2. Adopt a Personalised Maintenance Strategy

Once the cost of downtime has been quantified, you can then put
a value on maintenance. Any business has to balance competing
priorities for where budget should be allocated. When margins
are tight, maintenance is too frequently slashed. Everyone knows
that more maintenance results in higher availability and less
downtime, but it’s easier to make a case with concrete figures.

Comparing cost per hour of downtime with current availability

will give you a reasonable estimate for the value of increased
availability. Especially for critical assets, you may find that a
couple of percentage points increase in availability offers

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considerable value to the business.

Not all maintenance management plans are created equally,

however. A prescriptive maintenance schedule powered by
machine learning may be a smart investment for your most
critical assets. For inessential components that do not affect
safety, reactive or corrective maintenance may be the most cost-
effective route. Whatever the chosen strategy, cost-benefit
analysis requires accurate quantification of both the cost and the
benefits.

3. Invest in a Computerised Maintenance

Management Solution (CMMS)

In the modern manufacturing environment, digitalisation is no

longer just an option. Preventive, corrective and reactive
maintenance can be managed using spreadsheets and manual
methods. The implementation of cost-effective and efficient
predictive maintenance, however, requires more computational
power.

Fortunately for business owners, CMMS software is more

accessible, user-friendly, and affordable than ever before. The
switch towards cloud-based technologies mean that hefty capital
investments in on-premise systems are no longer necessary. The
transition to the monthly -as-a-Service model at a variety of price
points means businesses of all sizes can find a solution that works

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for them.

Read more: What is CMMS and How Can it Enhance my

Business?

4. Adopt a Digital Maintenance Schedule

With data and software in hand, you can then start moving from
reactive to proactive. Your CMMS software and last maintenance
dates will give you your initial preventive maintenance schedule.

Schedule planning is imperative to avoid double-booking a

technician maximising effectiveness. Remember that a reactive
maintenance management plan will not be eliminated. A general
rule of thumb is to estimate at least 20% of maintenance time for
reactive tasks.

5. Synchronise Work Orders, Technicians, Spare-

Parts and Maintenance Programmes

A perfectly planned maintenance management plan is useless if

you do not have the parts or technicians you need to carry it out.

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Maintenance typically requires the consumption of materials.

Whether simple or complex, the parts to complete a task should
be on hand before the task is started. All businesses face the
decision of risking tying up too much value in the parts
warehouse vs extending downtime due to out of stock parts.
Maintenance cannot be efficient without robust spare parts
management.

Spare parts inventory should be subject to the same rigorous

analysis as your overall maintenance strategy. What parts are
slow-moving or obsolete? Are excess parts being kept to satisfy

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high-risk aversion? What do you even have on hand, anyway?

One investigation found duplicate items in a given site ranged
from 5-15%. Most CMMS options support a level of spares
inventory management.

Staff is another point of contention for many manufacturing

operations. In-house, outsource, or a combination? If you
discover you do not have enough in-house staff to carry out your
scheduled maintenance tasks, outsourcing from a third-party can
be a cost-effective option. Many companies also use outsourcing
to deal with highly specialised tasks which only occur a few
times a year.

6. Track Short-Term KPIs and Build Long Term

Maintenance Programmes

It’s no secret that what gets measured gets managed. Simply

tracking metrics can lead to improvements as more operators and
managers are mindful of KPIs. However, tracking is just the first
part of the optimisation equation. Solid data is the foundation for
effective improvement.

A key advantage of CMMS software is that metric tracking is

taken care of with minimal administration. KPIs like Mean Time
Before Failure (MTBF), Mean Time To Repair (MTTR), Planned
Maintenance Percentage (PMP) and system availability are
calculated automatically. CMMS software also comes with

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predefined reports and graphics which give stakeholders a clear

picture of progress and problem areas.

Experts recommend spending a few weeks tracking the current

state of affairs before implementing changes to strategy. This will
function as a baseline which can be measured against future
performance to create a more effective maintenance management
plan.

7. Make Data-Driven Adjustments to Maintenance

Plan

With a clear picture of your performance baseline, the effect of

new changes can be measured over days, weeks and months.
Experts recommended introducing one or two new changes at a
time to limit the number of variables that affect your metrics.
This also helps isolate any changes which ultimately have
negative effects.

One thing to keep in mind is that it is not necessary to carry out a

complete overhaul all at once. Budget constraints may have you
performing preventive maintenance on initially before
introducing more effective predictive maintenance techniques.
Tracking predictive maintenance effectivity for one or two
important assets can help you determine if and when it should be
implemented across more machines. Reliability centred

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maintenance analysis offers a framework for improving

company-wide strategy.

Conclusion

Making sweeping changes to a manufacturing operation is a

daunting task. Companies of all sizes rightly consider the hassle
and risk of failure too great. Nevertheless, the increasingly
competitive environment means no manufacturer can risk being
left behind.

Fortunately for today’s businesses, the teething problems of the

first adopters have been ironed out. Small businesses are no
longer locked out of technology solutions due to cost. Predictive
methods are more accurate than ever. A maintenance
management plan can truly be personalised to the business
involved.

To find out more about which CMMS is best for your business,
try our free search tool.

Free CMMS Software Search »

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