4 Biggest Maintenance Challenges In Manufacturing (And How To Tackle Them)

Acquiring assets for a manufacturing facility comes with significant capital expenditures. Maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) are essential to maintain ideal operating conditions. MRO also ensures a long life for the assets. Inadequate maintenance leads to operational challenges, machine failure, and budget overrun.

Maintenance work is essential but it comes with its own set of challenges that need to be tackled. Here are the four biggest challenges faced by maintenance teams and how to tackle them.

1) Lack of standards

Maintenance procedures in a plant are part of a routine. The executed procedures should not vary each time they are undertaken. Lack of standard procedures causes ambiguity. Technicians have to run back and forward to rectify them, losing time. The variability in maintenance arising from ambiguity will cause problems down the line.

Standard operating procedures (SOP) define in detail “what, when, and how” of maintenance work. SOPs codify the procedure and make it easier for anyone to follow the instructions. SOPs standardize the maintenance process and eliminate vagueness. This ensures standard and replicable steps for any event. They can be hosted on central repositories like a mobile CMMS to give everyone in the plant quick and easy access to them.

2) Problems caused by unplanned downtime

Unexpected machine failures cause disruption in plant operations. According to a study conducted by Vanson Bourne (market research firm),  manufacturers on average experience 800 hours of unplanned downtime every year. Unplanned downtimes make the complete plant unproductive. Processes downstream of the machine failure will be idle in the event of machine failure. Active processes upstream will experience bottlenecks. Unplanned downtime affects the complete supply chain function for the company. They are caused by the inability to anticipate such a problem.

With the adoption of Industry 4.0, manufacturing facilities have access to complete data on operating parameters. This helps to engage in predictive maintenance. It is anticipating machine failure and planning for required maintenance. Executing the plan fixes the issue before problems arise. Predictive maintenance is akin to the adage “A stitch in time saves nine”.

3) Tight budgets for maintenance

Effective maintenance work in itself is not the end of maintenance activities. All the activities of a plant are for the profitability of the business. Maintenance managers and business managers have different opinions on what is necessary work. This conflict arises from the different goals they pursue.

A balance has to be struck between the two views for smooth and profitable plant operations. Maintenance managers have to accept the profitability goals of the business. They have to put in the effort to make the business management realize the business case of effective maintenance. Lack of adequate maintenance work causes machine failure and other operational problems. This affects the plant productivity and eventually profitability. Recognizing this helps company management realize the importance of maintenance work.

4) Team management

Managing teams is a challenging task that is difficult in any environment. Maintenance teams take up high-risk operations. They have a lot riding on the effective upkeep of plant assets. Managing such a team becomes even more challenging. Lack of communication and miscommunication puts plant operations in jeopardy. Problems are bound to arise when instructions are not relayed across properly.

Digital tools help to manage complex teams. CMMS acts as a central repository for all information on plant maintenance. Such software tools also facilitate easy communication between teams and employees. It can also handle preventive/predictive maintenance, maintenance automation, checklist management, and SOPs. CMMS manages teams besides managing plant maintenance activities.

Last words

Maintenance involves many complex and challenging tasks that are the consequence of an unpredictable environment and interconnectedness of most performed activities. CMMS helps avoid many of the stated challenges that come with it, but it has to be paired with good organization and a proactive mindset to be truly effective.

- The author, Bryan Christiansen is the founder and CEO of Limble CMMS. Limble is a modern, easy to use mobile CMMS software that takes the stress and chaos out of maintenance by helping managers organize, automate, and streamline their maintenance operations.

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