Maintenance is a crucial function in a manufacturing setup involving constant upkeep of the equipment, ensuring high-level reliability and efficiency. However, these departments often need to brace with a lot of inefficiencies, translating into significant waste. Properly comprehending and mitigating these wastes is the hallmark of a maintenance department for enhanced productivity and cost reduction.
In this blog, you will learn about the typical causes behind the waste across the maintenance departments, dig into the top waste, and explore the effective strategies to mitigate such waste. Finally, we will delve into the role of a mobile asset maintenance solution in helping to overcome these losses and driving the highest levels of efficiency.
Waste across maintenance departments arises due to a variety of factors. These include archaic or inefficient processes, poor training, improper communication, and insufficient resources. A couple of organizations still depend on outdated, manual processes that lack technological adoption. This can cause:
All these factors lead to inefficiencies, severely impacting the profitability of any organization. When you properly identify and address these problems, you can create a more fruitful maintenance culture.
Comprehending the specific types of waste prevalent in maintenance departments is critical for effective management. Let’s examine some of the key wastes of the maintenance department:
Generating excessive maintenance work than required leads to wasted resources and time. This happens when teams execute preventive maintenance quite frequently, without properly doing root-cause analysis or properly analyzing the right equipment requirements.
When parts, tools or data are not available on time or forces the maintenance team to constantly wait, it leads to severe downtime, negatively impacting the productivity. In other words, delays in obtaining materials or approvals can stop the intended maintenance activities.
Unnecessary transport of tools, equipment, or workforce leads to wasted time and effort. If your team is involved spending a lot of time shifting between locations or searching for the necessary equipment, efficiency suffers badly.
Keeping excess inventory such as spare parts or tools freezes the capital and storage space. This will also lead to obsolescence or spoilage of inventory.
Unnecessary or increased movement of the workforce while executing their tasks can lead to fatigue, stress, and inefficiency. This includes spending too much time reaching for tools that are far from the equipment or lack proper organization.
When there are defects in maintenance tasks, it leads to rework, wasting time and resources. Enforcing poor qualty measures during repairs can result in further breakdowns or safety hazards.
When you fail to utilize the right skills and expertise of your maintenance team, it can lead to wasted potential. This means resources may be assigned tasks that do not fit into their requirements or align with their skills, resulting in an inefficient work culture.
Inadequate planning of maintenance activities can cause delays, work overload, and unpredictable downtime. To overcome this, clearly schedule each intervention, so priorities are established, and the right resources are available at the right time, as needed.
Over-dependence on corrective maintenance such as fixing defects only when they occur can increase maintenance time and costs. Hence, it is better to foster preventive actions to identify the right activities in advance.
Using outdated or archaic technologies leads to poor efficiency and accuracy of the executed tasks. To overcome this, invest in advanced technologies that helps in effective condition monitoring using IoT sensors.
Poor collaboration among relevant stakeholder departments leads to improper planning and delays. Hence, it’s always necessary to foster open communication among your stakeholders, thereby promoting a collaborative maintenance culture.
To effectively mitigate these wastes, consider adopting the following strategies:
Leverage lean principles to probe into inefficiencies in your workflows. Map your processes to visualize the key areas of waste and execute strategies to eliminate unnecessary procedures.
Invest in good training programs for your maintenance staff. Empower them with the necessary skills and expertise that warrant performing their jobs efficiently, thereby fostering a culture of continuous improvement.
Leverage data analytics to shift from reactive to predictive maintenance strategies. Analyze equipment performance data, so you can easily predict failures before they occur. This minimizes downtime and unnecessary repairs.
Revisit your inventory levels regularly to ensure you always have the right number of spare parts on hand – no overstocking or understocking. To do so, implement just-in-time inventory practices wherever applicable.
Promote open communication within your team and across different departments. Leverage digital solutions that provide real-time updates on work orders, inventory levels, and equipment status.
Organize your workspace properly, so your tools and materials are easily accessible to your team members. Implement 5S methodology: Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardize, Sustain) to improve your inventory culture.
A mobile asset maintenance solution as offered by Propel Apps, a digital supply chain transformation company, can play a major role in eliminating the waste in the maintenance department while improving overall efficiency. This solution integrates with your in-house ERP system (Oracle or SAP) while leveraging advanced technologies like AI, machine learning, and IoT to deliver the right maintenance insights, fostering a data-driven maintenance culture.
All the above features in this Propel Apps’s mobile asset maintenance solution enable your maintenance team to effectively minimize waste, while empowering them to work more efficiently. To know more about this solution and how it can make a positive impact in your maintenance culture, schedule a free demo with us.
Any organization’s maintenance department has to deal with a couple of wastes, which can drastically hinder operational efficiency and increase expenditure. Effectively mitigating these wastes by leveraging key strategies, coupled with a cutting-edge asset maintenance solution as offered by Propel Apps can positively impact the maintenance culture of an organization. Hence, it’s time for your organization to imbibe these changes today to revolutionize your maintenance department into a powerhouse of efficiency!
