New Year’s Maintenance Resolutions: 4 Steps to Maintenance Improvement

As another new year approaches, we start to think about process improvements and goals for the year ahead. Similar to personal resolutions, business resolutions involve a look at the past year. We analyze what worked and what didn’t, and maintenance and facility managers look for new ways to improve maintenance performance and reduce costs in the coming year. Here are some maintenance resolutions to consider to improve your maintenance operations in the year to come.

1. Plan

Develop a plan. Monthly, quarterly, and yearly process improvements and measurable goals will help keep a maintenance department moving forward. Perhaps you want to reduce your equipment downtime or reorganize all of your assets. Develop a plan and timetable, and execute it against defined benchmarks.

Establishing goals for the year go hand-in-hand with developing the annual budget. Be sure to include new equipment needs, staff training, and any new initiative requirements to meet your goals.

2. Update

If your company is still relying on spreadsheets or the even old-fashioned pen-and-paper methods to track assets and work orders, this resolution is especially important to you. The time has come streamline your maintenance operations through the use of a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS).

There are many advantages to upgrading to a CMMS. These advantages include efficient work order management, preventive maintenance scheduling, access to real time maintenance information, ability to analyze reports on work orders, assets, labor usage, and parts and inventory for possible improvement.

3. Maintain

All assets require a certain amount of upkeep. In order to preserve an asset, specific procedures must be put in place. A robust CMMS will help you schedule preventive maintenance and gather data to document and report on actual asset life.

Reduce downtime, conserve assets, and decrease repair costs. If any equipment was prematurely replaced last year or if there was an increase in breakdowns, a preventive maintenance strategy will guarantee operational improvements.

4. Measure

Start by setting certain benchmarks in order to measure maintenance performance and determine results. Key Performance Indicators (KPI) allow for operational analysis so goals can be set and monitored.

Track and measure the things that are most important to your department. Some potential things to measure include time between failure, PM schedule compliance, and unplanned maintenance. Analyze these KPI’s throughout the year in order to make improvements.