Bad Practices, Part 3

A single bad maintenance practice can defeat the collective good from otherwise following best practices. Here are two more bad practices to be aware of:Bad Practice #4 — Focusing Almost Entirely on ProductionMany maintenance departments have been scaled back and are resourced thinly in terms of talent, test equipment, and training. Since production losses are great attention-getting incidents, resources tend to get allocated to production equipment and not to the infrastructure upon whichthey rely. Then people are surprised when the plant suddenly goes dark. Make sure every plant asset gets its recommended maintenance.Bad Practice #5 — Skipping Scheduled MaintenanceAfter a week of putting out fires to keep production running, preventive maintenance orders have piled up. If you could wave your magic wand and make a few disappear, you'd be caught up again. One target of this "time saver" is the breaker that isn't nuisance tripping. Nobody asks if it even can trip, until after the arc blast.The recommended maintenance interval is based on actual data: skipping it is irresponsible. Consider hiring contractors so you can catch up.