Why and how to achieve excellent maintenance?

In many companies management is looking forward with renewed interest in maintenance, an often- neglected complex function which is capable of generating a lot of benefits.

Excellent maintenance helps to achieve better competitiveness and to acquire good position in the range of sustainability, improving the mix of the three key characteristic factors of sustainable growth for a better quality of life: “LIFE WORTH, EQUITABLE AND ACHIEVABLE” (Brundtland Report, United Countries Commission of Development Environment,
1987).

With this awareness, how can management accelerate the achievement of maintenance in an excellent status? The answer is mainly having enough willpower to implement systematically the universal methodology of trinomial factors of the continuous improvement recipe: LEADERSHIP + DEMING CYCLE + CULTURE

In fact, in order to use the Deming Cycle in a profitable way it is necessary to have the following two fundamental resources:

Supervisors and managers with leadership
Knowledge of the maintenance discipline culture.

It is not possible here to discuss leadership, the characteristic that each professional should know very well. However, it is important to point out that the basic knowledge of maintenance is already contained in the standardization documents:

The ISO Standard series 9000 Quality and 14000 Environment
The CEN Standard of the Committee TC 319 Maintenance.

CEN has already issued a group of standards, which are a common and homogeneous basis to build an excellent maintenance:

CEN EN 13306:2010 Terminology
CEN EN 15341:2007 Maintenance Key Performance Indicators
CEN EN 15331:2011 Maintenance On buildings

These standards are generated by groups of experts, delegated by the National Standardization Bodies of Europe. They are the best references for starting to develop projects towards excellent maintenance with creativity in the organization, computerization and technological innovations to meet the specific requirements of the industrial or service-activities.

This is the way to overcome the misconceived thinking that maintenance is only a cost. On the contrary,
maintenance is a Center of Benefits – when it is excellent.

Of course it is necessary to be able to measure it and achieve the real “Best Return from Maintenance”.