Is your company in the fix-it business?

It is if it isn’t encouraging the reporting of equipment that’s wearing out—or if it’s not taking action when it does get a report.

If that describes your company, you probably already know that the fix-it business isn’t a good business to be in.

All assets and materials eventually wear out, and worn-out equipment leads to equipment failures. Fixing equipment after it has failed is much more expensive than keeping it from breaking in the first place—not even counting the downtime, inefficiencies, safety risks, and other costs that come with equipment failure.

It’s far better to be in the preventative maintenance business, where costs are lower and more predictable. So how do you get there from a fix-up business?

More Inspections, Good Communication, Less Repairs

The only way to reliably track equipment deterioration is to regularly inspect the equipment. When equipment is inspected and wear is reported, timely preventative maintenance can occur before a failure, thereby lowering maintenance costs and extending the life of equipment.

Using inspection checklist systems such as The Checker, thorough inspections can be done quickly and accurately. But the inspection itself isn’t going to help maintenance unless they hear about any relevant issues.

In many companies, unless there’s a compliance issue, nothing is reported. What’s needed is a call to maintenance!

Frequent, structured communication between operations and maintenance regarding the ongoing condition of equipment will save a lot of money and hassle. Yet in many companies, maintenance never gets a call until something needs fixing or repairing. Even though it’s been slowly falling apart for two years, they’re just now hearing about it!

It shouldn’t be that way.  Maintenance’s role should be servicing and prevention—not constant repairs of equipment that should have received attention before it failed. If you have an effective inspection and audit program in place to identify the proactive maintenance needed, and this information is systematically passed on to maintenance, there should almost never be calls to maintenance for repairs.

The “maintenance to the rescue” mentality is a sign of a company where equipment wear isn’t systematically being inspected, identified, and addressed.

Takeaway

Failing to regularly inspect equipment and report any wear and tear to the maintenance department leads to many avoidable costs and keeps maintenance managers and personnel stuck in a reactive, emergency mode. The better approach is for companies to proactively inspect equipment for wear and take preventative maintenance steps when it’s discovered.

That will get you out of the fix-it business! 

Image courtesy of Dafydd Vaughan, Creative Commons.