Jeremy Salisbury, head of marketing, Brammer UK, looks at
the contribution that a procedure-based approach to
maintenance can make to best practice, with a major
impact on equipment reliability and reduced downtime

Designing and implementing an
effective maintenance strategy is
essential for a company’s
competitiveness, with modern maintenance
practices and technologies able to reduce the
cost of production and maintenance and
improve productivity.

Modern maintenance practices are about
far more than reactive or regularly scheduled
maintenance. Forward-looking
manufacturers aim to ensure production
quality and output while minimising
downtime from unscheduled maintenance
and optimising resources throughout the
production process.

But exactly what form should the
maintenance process take? Traditionally,
maintenance, whether planned or reactive,
has often relied on the knowledge and skill
of maintenance engineers. There has been a
mystique about the process, with a
perception – often perpetuated by
maintenance engineers themselves – that the
many variables associated with maintenance
tasks make compliance with written
procedures impractical. Meanwhile, the ‘I’ve
always done it this way’ approach still
prevails in many organisations. This results
in inconsistencies, both between how
different people undertake the same task,
and in how knowledge is transferred
between maintenance engineers.

However, many manufacturing
organisations are increasingly realising that a
strategy based on thoroughly defined,
codified practices is preferable to this
‘intuitive’ approach as it can deliver greater
consistency and, for multi-site operations,
greater accountability and economies of scale.

Ultimately, the more detailed the
procedures and the greater the insistence on
compliance with them, the more precise and
less susceptible to error the maintenance
process will become. Truly procedure-based
organisations will generate and comply with
detailed written instructions for all aspects of
maintenance (and indeed other operational
activities). However, it must be remembered
that the value of procedure-based
maintenance lies not in the existence of
documents themselves, but in the
experience, ingenuity and engineering
knowledge that these procedures represent.

In essence, decisions about how maintenance
will be conducted are codified into a
procedure that represents a benchmark for
the organisation. Not only does this clarify
what is expected – enabling managers to
better assess individual performance – and
help ensure consistency throughout the
organisation, it contributes significantly to
delivering continuity of practice in the event
of a member of the maintenance team
leaving or simply being unavailable.

Key to the maintenance plan should be the
optimisation of the maintenance tasks
undertaken and the manner in which they
are completed. Some common preventive
maintenance tasks fail to add value or
actually cause problems themselves. For
example, greasing motors monthly – because
this is what has always happened – when sixmonthly
greasing may be all that is required
creates five potentially damage-causing
procedures. Tasks should be prioritised in
relation to criteria such as criticality and
reliability goals, failure history, access for
maintainability, and available technology and
skills. The knowledge and insight of
employees and industry experts should be
harnessed at every stage in developing the
work plan.

The availability and effectiveness of
computerised maintenance management
systems (CMMS) will impact on how
maintenance programmes are designed and
implemented – and vice versa. If a welldefined
procedure-based maintenance
programme is developed, sophisticated
planning and scheduling software becomes a
key enabling tool, providing access to work
plans and supporting documents.

The ‘maintainability’ of equipment – the
degree to which maintenance tasks can be
carried out – will also have an influence.

Equipment which must be shut down for
inspection or adjustment, or on which these
tasks are time-consuming or potentially
hazardous, is said to offer poor
maintainability. However, if work has been
optimised, then a list of required equipment
modifications will already exist. Irrespective
of the scale of modifications required, the
key is to close the loop with engineering and
procurement so that maintenance and
purchasing activity is aligned with
maintainability goals.

With all this taken into account, the next
phase is to create optimised equipment
maintenance work plans. Using hard copy
documents, such as procedures from OEM
manuals, does not generally allow the
flexibility to develop and enhance processes.

However, using ‘pseudo documents’ stored in
a database, printed off when needed, but
easily updateable, enables greater flexibility
in managing each process and the more
rapid adoption of best practice into each
procedure – which is, after all, the key
rationale for adopting this approach to
maintenance.

While successful procedure-based
maintenance relies on strict compliance with
agreed checklist of tasks, its true value lies in
offering the flexibility for continuous
improvement of each maintenance procedure
by harnessing knowledge from within and
outside the organisation, clearly codifying
tasks, which negates the possibility for
individual errors or non-optimal practice, and
so delivering consistent and measurable results.