Does the same repair get repeated many times — on the same equipment or even by the same person? How do you know whether this is the case?
Most production facilities today use a CMMS for their preventive/predictive maintenance program. Using this system, they can manage work orders, track common issues, fine tune procedures, and take other useful actions to make maintenance more effective and less costly.
Maintenance is planned, so this framework fits it well. Repairs typically aren’t planned, or if they are planned the timeframe is usually very short. Repairs tend to be done in reactive or responsive mode (in some facilities, maintenance is also this way but it should not be).
Putting unplanned work into a planning/tracking system seems counter intuitive. But it is the only way to get a handle on why those repairs are necessary, which ones are necessary most often, and which ones are costing you the most (in production revenue, maintenance resources, etc.).
Use the CMMS to look for patterns, so you can solve for the cause of the same failure or breakdown rather than repeating the same repair ad nauseum.
