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Ever wonder why important and costly assets are not maintained? Take for instance a glorious home, built to opulent standard and then left to ruin. Without the funds, expertise, or energy to maintain and repair, before long a little negligence, the occasional oops, and some storm damage later it has become uninhabitable and is abandoned to Father Time. Occasionally, someone with a great passion to bring relics back to life comes along and with great care and expense does bring it to new life. Quite often though it is simply razed and replaced with new construction.

This same cycle happens with all assets of significant value, large and small. Buildings, automobiles, industrial equipment, and entire factories have all experienced this life cycle.

There is no single answer to the question. 

So, what exactly does planned maintenance require?

By having all essential resources, including labor and components, as well as a plan for using them, planned maintenance aims to minimize downtime. The objective is to reduce the expenses and downtimes related to failures; that's why scheduled maintenance is employed in advance. The process of identifying the materials, equipment, labor, and other services needed to address any additional challenges also involves using preventive planned maintenance. 

The reality is that maintenance has 8 key aspects which can each become a complex hurdle to overcome. Often the default answer is to employ popular yet short sighted decision making to defer maintenance, pushing the inevitable costs into the future and      onto different leaders or owners who were not part of the initial deferred maintenance rationale. 

Those who provide careful tending of assets to preserve their original function and production output are truly rare and those with a natural born instinct to maintain, diagnose, educate, and lovingly improve factory assets are a very small percent of our population. Thankfully, these skills can be taught and fostered amongst today’s maintenance workforce and with time and coaching, they too can experience the joy and satisfaction of well-maintained assets which flawlessly perform to meet business demands.

At the end of the day, maintenance is a value to preserve the integrity and function of key assets in such a manner that deferred maintenance would never be seriously considered.

The Ultimate Goal is Zero Equipment Failures Between Planned Maintenance Activities

Planned maintenance happens when the eight maintenance competencies are in place, understood, and work together to effectively and efficiently maintain assets that consistently and flawlessly achieve production output. 

The Eight Competencies of Planned Maintenance

1. Support Daily Team Maintenance with Operations: Work together to restore critical assets to like new or better condition and keep them that way.
2. Lubrication Management: Lubrication is the lifeblood of machinery. Build a lubrication management system that delivers flawless lubrication practices.
3. Zero Failure Activities: Apply DMAIC methodology to identify root causes for unplanned failures, and address identified causes with countermeasures.
4. Spare Parts Management: Build a spare parts system that supports zero unplanned downtime at minimum cost
5. Maintenance Skills Enhancement: Ensure maintenance associates can effectively deliver flawless MTTR with expert skill.
6. Maintenance Cost Management: Understand costs, diagnose losses, and build a maintenance system that delivers spending for proactive maintenance and strives to eliminate reactive maintenance costs.
7. Preventative Maintenance: Deliver maximum run time between planned maintenance (MTBF) ensuring delivery of 100% on-time PMs and expert machine condition monitoring.
8. Predictive Maintenance: Identify critical assets and implement targeted advanced condition monitoring to detect wear and predict failures.

Why Is Planned Maintenance Vital?

Planned maintenance assists businesses in avoiding unnecessary expenditures and total service interruptions. For every business that offers continuous service or product, it is not just crucial, it is necessary. An overall rise in effectiveness and productivity is one of the main values of planned maintenance. The increased life cycle of equipment is another benefit of performing routine maintenance. This also helps ensure the safety of operators and other personnel near heavy equipment, therefore regularly scheduled maintenance is crucial. The failure of poorly maintained machinery might result in significant injuries. Overall having a planned maintenance system helps prevent downtime ensuring that the product is transported to the appropriate location at the right time, which will help foster customer satisfaction.

How Can Performance Solutions by Milliken Help?

Ready to unleash the full potential of your maintenance department? Performance Solutions by Milliken can help. Our practitioners have extensive experience implementing sustainable planned maintenance systems. Our team-based approach leverages the power of all associates in building a strong proactive maintenance culture.  Contact us today to get started.