5 Tips for an Effective Maintenance Department Structure

Business success doesn’t occur in a vacuum – when an organization is running like an efficient, finely tuned machine, that’s a good indication that the maintenance department is working its magic away from the spotlight. Put simply, an effective maintenance department structure is key to organizational success.

Understanding the importance of your maintenance department is easy. Ensuring that the moving parts of said department are firing on all cylinders to keep your assets performing at peak levels presents more of a challenge. In most cases, optimal maintenance department structure starts with good organizational design. With this article, we’re going to explore some ways that you can achieve this moving forward.

>FirstThingsFirst –Let’sDefineEffectiveMaintenanceOperations:

Generally speaking,themaintenance department’s primary responsibility is to keep your assets operational.But let’sadd an extra element to this definition:

Your maintenance department should keep everything operational within the scope of your organization’s budget and goals. A maintenance department structure that ensures peak performance of individual assets while blowing through your budgetandwasting employee labor is not effective.

It is well known that preventivemaintenance is integral to productionand has amaterial impact on the reliability and uptime of your assets.In fact,according to the Marshall Institute, A Measured approach to Uptime, “It is widely accepted in the maintenance industry that a well-planned Work Order is about 3 times less expensive than the same unplanned reactive Work Order and that Emergency repairs may cost as much as 5 to 7 times more than planned work, which can obviously have a huge impact on the bottom line”.

Is your maintenance department structure conducive to supporting a proactive planned maintenance program? Are you constantly trading off preventive work to handle emergencies?

Are you able tooptimize your cost structurewith effective maintenance planning? To be cost-effective and efficient, a maintenance department needs to be structured well to at least have a chance for success.

>TheFirstSteps

To improvethe structure of your maintenance department, itis important to have clarityaboutand prioritize thedepartment’s goals.One industrialmaintenance team might prioritizereducing costs throughinspections and preventive tasks, while anotherfocuses onrapidresponse time tominimizeproductiondowntime. The specificgoals vary from department to department but it’s always important that you knowwhere you stand today andwhatshould be your priorities.For the purposes of this article,let’s assume that our maintenance department is responsible for:

  • Ensuring all operating systems are available and running
  • Performing routine checks to prevent unexpected breakdowns
  • Repairing equipment breakdowns quickly to limit downtime
  • Collaborating with other departments,such asproduction
  • Maintaining a safe working environment
  • Delivering high-quality results, in other words…fix-it-right the first time

Once you’vedetermined yourpriorities, then evaluate whether you are able tomanage the department to those strategies.If inspections and routine preventive work are a priority, but the backlog is full ofold work orders for low-priority work, then youractions aren’t meeting your goals.If work requestscome in all urgent, high priority, or safety,when they are notan emergency,then you might have a structural (and behavioral) issue.

>5 Tips to Optimize Your Maintenance Department Structure

Of course, your priorities and goals will likely includebothdeliveringhigh-service levels for responding to emergencies ANDconducting regular routine maintenance activitiesto prevent breakdowns. How do you structureyour organizationto successfullymeet all your goals?

>1. Organize Around Your Priorities

Teams are often organized around their craft such as plumbing, electrical, mechanical etc.To better meet department goals, it may be better to organize the team around your priorities instead. For example, if the same team (or person) is assigned to preventive work then pulled away when there is an emergency, then you are structured to primarily respond to emergencies. To successfully run a preventive program, you will want to consider creating teams that have a primary focus on PM work while another team focuses on emergency repairs.

An example to consider – three teams with complementary roles:

  • PreventiveMaintenance(PM)Crew.A dedicated team of various disciplines whocan become experts in preventive maintenance tasks.They can maintain documentation onthe various equipment andsupportthe implementation ofpredictive technologieslike sensorsto deliverfurther efficiencies.These people can work a regular day shift, 40 hour week.
  • >The Repair Crew.A dedicated team of various disciplines whoarewholly responsible to respond to urgent, high priority, and safety issues. This teamwouldneed to be made up with knowledgeable technicians who aregood atmaking quick decisions andadapting to the changing needs.They would not be responsible for heavy corrective repairsorplannedprojects.
  • >Production Line Crew.Depending on the production line, this can bea single person assigned to a single production line to basicallyconduct daily inspections,make adjustmentsas needed,andcompletescheduled corrective repairs.This could be a day crew working a regular40-hourweekand also handle emergency repairs during their shift while the night crew is only the “Repair Squad.”

Depending upon your environment, the mix of teams and roles will shift of course, but the idea is that by organizing in this way, you can achieve a more balanced effort towards the preventive tasks to better manage headcount, reduce overtime and reduce costs in the long run.

>2. Structure Roles for Accountability and Employee Retention

It’s important to createroles with clearly defined responsibilities so thatyour teamknows what is expected of them.Assigning people to teamsaligned arounddepartment key goals will give them a sense of purpose and clarity in how they and the team will be measured.The PM crewcanfocus onreducing thebacklog(Maintenance Effectiveness), the Repair crew onMean Time to Repairand theProduction Crew onassetuptime(Overall Equipment EffectivenessandMean Time Between Failures).

Even if you don’t organize teams around preventive vs. breakdown tasks, you can develop job roles and a set of responsibilities that vary in focus by employee. Some employees can be the first to be assigned to urgent situations while others are generally focused on day-to-day PM work. This gives you the flexibility to recognize that certain employees are more suited to the data analysis and documentation required for a solid preventive maintenance program, while others thrive on the rapid pace and excitement of responding to an urgent situation.

Structuring roles with focus and clarity in metricsthen assigning to the employee with the right temperament and talentswill improveperformance andemployee satisfaction.Plus, there’s a financial incentive to keeping employees happy –Forbes estimates that disengaged employees could cost you 34% of their salary.Even by conservative estimates, that could be over $20,000 a year per employee!

>3. Create Clear Lines ofReal-TimeCommunication

The most qualified, highly skilled maintenance department in the world is useless without proper communication within the department and within the organization as a whole. Clear lines of communication, laser-focused processes, and well-documented roles within your maintenancedepartment structureallowseach employee toseehow theycontribute to the overalldepartment goals, while also embracing their position-specific tasks and responsibilities.

Fully utilizing SAP PM is a key tool toestablish clear processes and maintainaccess across the organization to the real-time status of notifications, work orders andmore. This means, that more thanjust a few specially trained individuals need to be able to access and update SAP.Providing aneasyinterface to SAPfor the whole maintenance staff withmobile devicesenablesreal-timecoordination, collaboration, andresults in greateremployee engagementand motivation.

>4. Standardize and Document Procedures

Want to improve morale and productivity at the same time?Starting from onboarding and training, make sure that your entire department haseasy access to standard maintenance operating procedures, O&ampM manuals, EHS guidelines, and preventive maintenance checklists.With the right structure and access to documentation, when you change your procedures or update your EAM software, your team should know where to look and what to do without asking.

And again, mobile technologiesare key tostandardizingandreinforcingkey department procedures.A mobile appguides the work steps and can even be set up to requireastep, like asafety check, beforesubmittinga work order as complete.

Tech adoption isalsoanother way to boost employee retention, particularly amongst theyounger generation. Outdated technology and inefficient procedures might even dissuade tech-savvy candidates from applying for work.

>5. PursueContinuousImprovement

Without constant improvements,what was once alean, cost-effective maintenance department structure can become an outdated, inefficient drain on your company’s resources. To ensure that you stay ahead of the curve, you need to remain up to date on the latesttechnologiesand best practices foroperating a maintenance department withSAPPlantMaintenance.

Rafael Padilha,The Director for Reliability and Continuous ImprovementatIngredionhas been in the center of reorganizing maintenance organizations for success atseveral large production operations includingAmbev(a subsidiary ofAnheuser-Busch),and Unilever.Hefound that change starts withestablishing and gaining alignmentacross the organization to a few clear goals. The next step is to start the processwith the help of technology to structure the work, improve communications, measureand show results against the aligned metrics.Thentake it to the next level,as in Ingredion,“The maintenance staff could now spend their time on building proactive maintenance plans, evaluating different spare parts to extend the lifecycle of the assets, driving improvements, and pursuing cost reductions.”

It doesn’t matter whether you are focused on industrial maintenance in an automotive plant or are looking to optimize the structure of your resource extraction field maintenance team, the path to long-term productivity and optimal performance startsby optimizing yourEnterprise Asset Managementsystems.

>Why Choose Sigga?

With20 years ofexperiencein digitizing maintenance processes with Enterprise organizations, Sigga knows what it takes tosupport the establishment of an effectivemaintenance organizationstructure–we providemaintenance departments across the globe with scalable,mobileappsand automation software for SAP EAMthat get results.

Working with clientsfrommultiple industry sectors, including Oil &amp Gas, Mining, and Manufacturing, ourleadingsolutionsmake it easy formaintenance departmentstoestablish clear roles, document processes, and track progresswithincreased data visibility.

Sigga Mobile EAMis a proven mobile solution designed to digitize the activities of the maintenance and repair worker. The solution replaces tedious, manual paper-based processes witha direct interface to SAP for immediate access to manualsandrepair instructionsplustheability to quickly create a notification and coordinatetasks.Sigga Warehouse and Inventoryextends the mobile benefits for further cross-organization collaboration benefits.

Sigga Planning &amp Schedulingenables the planner to replace tedious spreadsheet work with a solution to automatically create a baseline schedule for maintenance and repair activities. This allows the planner to focus their time on finessing the schedule with ad hoc requirements and making their own value-added inputs.

Talk to our consultantsabout organizing for successand utilizing digital technologies toenablethe change.

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