Maintenance New Year’s Resolutions

As the New Year rolls around there are thoughts of improvements and goals for the year ahead. Similar to personal resolutions, business resolutions involve a look at the past year: what worked and what didn’t work? Maintenance and Facility managers are realizing that fine-tuning last year’s operations are vital for the New Year’s success. We recommend these resolutions as a way to improve procedures, increase savings, and gauge success.

1. Plan

A successful year is near impossible without some sort of plan. Monthly, quarterly, and yearly goals will help keep a maintenance department on track. Maybe you want to reduce your equipment downtime or re-organize all your assets; take these improvements and make them attainable goals.

Planning goals for the year go hand in hand with the yearly budget. Things such as new equipment, staff training, or department initiatives need to be factored in for the upcoming year in order to prioritize the plan ahead. Prove to the company’s upper management that maintenance and facility departments can be a profit center.

2. Update

If your company is still relying on spreadsheets or the even more painful pen and paper to track assets and work orders, this resolution is especially important. The time has come for an updated maintenance strategy and process. Let 2013 be the Year of CMMS.

There are many advantages to upgrading to a comprehensive computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), not to mention it’s paperless. These advantages include: preventive maintenance scheduling, analysis and reporting, accessible database, real-time information, and much more.

3. Maintain

All assets have a certain amount of upkeep. In order to preserve an asset, specific procedures must be in place. For maintenance and facility managers, these procedures can be achieved and scheduled with preventive maintenance.

Preventive maintenance is designed to extend equipment life and avoid any unplanned failure activity. By maintaining all assets, you will reduce downtime, conserve assets, and decrease repair costs. If any equipment was prematurely replaced last year or if there were an increase in breakdowns, a preventive maintenance strategy will guarantee operations improvements.

4. Measure

Don’t wait until the end of the year to figure out if something is working. Start by setting certain benchmarks in order to measure maintenance performance and determine results. Key Performance Indicators (KPI) allow for operations analysis so goals can be set and monitored.

Track and measure the things that are most important to your department, such as, time between failure, pm schedule compliance, or unplanned maintenance. Set benchmarks, resume operations, get results. It is important to analyze these KPIs throughout the year in order to make improvements.

5. Learn

Learning from the past year is essential to growth within 2013. But, the learning doesn’t stop once January ends. The study of your operations, those around you, and other industry professionals is key. Instead of trying to figure out the wins and losses of the past year on your own, get with your entire maintenance or facility department for new opinions.

Similarly, it can be extremely useful to get new perspectives from industry peers. This can be accomplished by picking up a copy of the latest maintenance magazine, joining a professional group, or even attending a conference. And, as always, staying up-to-date on industry blogs.

Does anyone have any other business or maintenance goals for 2013? Let us know below or on our Facebook page.