Something that’s often overlooked when seeking to take the maintenance department to the next level of performance is improving the work flow. Doing so can have a dramatic effect.
Begin by creating a simple flowchart of what is done for a given function (e.g., handling downtime incidents, performing predictive maintenance, performing preventive maintenance, etc.)
Then ask questions, such as:
- Where do delays exist
- What steps can be eliminated?
- Is there a more efficient way to perform a given step?
A three-shift plant in western Tennessee replaced its plant engineer, because downtime was causing a critical customer to threaten to find another supplier. The new plant engineer applied this method to the handling of downtime incidents of equipment used to make parts for this critical customer. The average downtime window shrank from 17 hr to slightly under 1 hr. That was entirely due to changing the work flow (e.g., no more paper forms, direct radio contact instead).
