Ain’t broken mentality is costing UK industry millions

The ‘fix it when it’s broken’ approach to maintenance management is costing manufacturing industry around the world millions of pounds every year. According to the results of a survey among 470 manufacturing and operations-related firms, on plant, equipment, facilities and asset management, commissioned by Swedish ERP firm Intentia, maintenance is still seen as a cost rather than an investment in just over half our companies. “Almost 90% of organisations agree that preventative maintenance increases productivity and return on assets, yet only around a third currently spend more than half of their maintenance budget on preventive strategies,” says Chris Cooper, director of plant maintenance at Intentia. He adds: “Organisations are under increased pressure to deliver more for less, with reduced resources and budgets. The results show that there also appears to be a lack of awareness by management of issues relating to maintenance, and the benefits that can be gained by an integrated maintenance system.” The survey results produce one very clear message – advanced maintenance techniques like reliability centred maintenance (RCM) are not getting enough support from senior management, and their real potential to improve efficiency, asset utilisation and profitability is not being recognised. Cooper cites serious downtime resulting from the corrective only approach as the real issue – resulting from processes, parts and the right technicians not being in the right place at the right time. “All contingencies need to be accounted for,” he says. He laments the fact that the survey shows there appear to be good intentions, but in practice, maintenance procedures are behind the times, and there’s a generally poor comprehension of maintenance issues by management. Around 25% of respondents believe this remains one of their biggest challenges. One in eight respondents indicated that their annual loss of production due to plant equipment failure exceeds $500,000. “It is at the larger end of the scale that we are seeing most of the losses,” says Cooper. “A third of organisations with more than 1,000 employees experienced an annual maintenance-related loss of production of more than $500,000 – most of which could be avoided with the right maintenance strategy,” he adds. Cooper claims that maintenance management software is a critical tool in contemporary production and operations environments. Integration of systems and practices to manage organizations has effectively revolutionized maintenance, but organizations need to be able to calculate the return on investment the solution will provide them and sell the benefits to management. “The facts appear to be obvious. A greater investment in maintenance means less downtime, which means greater profit,” Chris says. “It’s just a matter of proving exactly how much an organization can benefit.”