If you’re a business facility manager, you know there’s so much on your plate. It can be challenging to ensure that the business facilities are running smoothly every day. Added to that is the pressure of staying on top of the maintenance needs. Gone are the days when you can relax and think that because something isn’t broken, there isn’t any need to fix it. Today, a better approach is to be proactive, to stay on top of all repairs before one is even needed.
It is where a well-drafted and well-planned maintenance program comes in handy. A reliable program is key to keeping all your equipment in operable condition and ensuring its safety when in use. You can think of this as that systematic approach to building operations that can help predict and prevent any failure of equipment before they even happen. Its importance has to be highlighted enough, necessitating the need to ensure that your maintenance program always turns out to be the best and the most effective.
Are you keen on taking your business’ maintenance program from sources like https://www.60hertzenergy.com and similar ones to the next level? Here are four ideas to help get you started.
- Get The Right People On Board
The maintenance program that you’ve developed isn’t going to run by itself. To set things into motion, you must get the right people on board. Those are individuals whom you’ve identified as qualified to run your preventive maintenance program successfully.
With that, if you’re planning to hire more individuals to be on your team, then be very stringent about this process. The more expertise a job candidate has, the better. Think of all the positions you need to fill, like top management, facility managers, operators, and maintenance technicians, to name a few.
- Identify The Four Key Action Items Of Preventive Maintenance
For it to succeed, there are four essential action items that preventive maintenance needs to satisfy. Identify them, then ensure that your maintenance program can achieve those four key actions.
To wit:
- Inspection. No preventive maintenance program can start without it. It’s in this process that a thorough check on your facility is conducted to identify what the problem areas may be.
Most importantly, facility inspections also ensure that all the equipment is safe to use. That way, you can be assured to a higher extent that you don’t have any faulty equipment that may cause workplace accidents and injuries.
Likewise, regular inspections also protect your property as a whole. You can ensure that the equipment functions well per the manufacturer’s instructions. Otherwise, the risk of hazards like fire due to electrical malfunctions may be high.
- Detection. During the inspection process, a detection process can be made as to any potential problems that could arise. Early detection is key to preventing any major failure in your facility, which can wind up costing your business’ facility department a lot of money. The goal should be for your maintenance program to help your team detect the problems early, at a phase when they’re still relatively inexpensive and easy to fix.
- Correction. It is a crucial action, which refers to proactive movement, caring for equipment, and correcting potential issues before they even arise. A good maintenance program plan should highlight those signs of potential problems, so you can check whether or not you have equipment that’s potentially displaying those signs.
Correction is that vital step that can help prevent worsening the situation, which, in turn, can lead to a shut down of operations. It isn’t what you’d want for your business, as shutdowns may lead to delays and lost profits. - Prevention. Lastly, prevention should be the goal after going through the three main actions above. As it implies, prevention helps lower the likelihood of the same equipment problem or failure happening again. To prevent possible repetitive problems, facility managers must take notes by using maintenance and inspection records. It again ties up with the need to get the right people on board. A skilled and good team can work with your software and maintenance programs to focus on proactive rather than reactive maintenance jobs.
- Track The Maintenance Metrics
Once you have a maintenance program up and running, the only way to determine whether or not it’s reliable or if any improvements are needed is by tracking the maintenance metrics. These are your Key Performance Indicators or KPIs.
Be very careful with identifying your KPIs, as they should be done so according to your facility’s specifications. Your maintenance department and the team can use KPIs to manage all of the maintenance activities in your facility and also improve the focus of your initiatives based on driving more value to your organization.
- Leverage The Right Technology
Luckily for facility managers today, technology is there to their advantage. In fact, at present, technology is one of the most vital ingredients in creating an effective preventive maintenance program. While this is a function you can do manually, it can be more efficient and effective when you utilize digital means.
Here’s why. Leveraging a digital solution can help your team arrange all of the maintenance tasks that have to be done in your facility. These include time-consuming work relating to listing all the maintenance and repairs done for each piece of equipment, their respective repair schedules, organizing work orders, and schedule when the next repair will be.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, preventive maintenance and planning always work together to be perfect for each other. One can’t go without the other, especially when you aim to ensure your preventive maintenance program stays up-to-date and relevant. Do the tips above as regularly as needed to avoid the more expensive and riskier situation of having faulty equipment and inoperative facilities due to an inefficient maintenance program. When taken as a whole, the goals of the tips above should be to improve the reliability and functionality of assets, maximize productivity, and reduce downtime.
