Maintenance Excellence - The Success Factors

Reinhard and Peter — Peter Gagg (left) and Dr Reinhard Korb

The success factors paving the way to Maintenance Excellence

MCP have supported many well-known companies across the world in their journey to achieve Maintenance Excellence. We know, very well, that the path can be long with many hurdles along the way. If you are looking to begin your journey, or try again after previous stalled attempts, you may be asking yourself “What does it actually take to bring a maintenance organisation to a world-class level?”

Let us provide the answer for you via a transcribed meeting, with two of the most experienced consultants in maintenance excellence, Dr Reinhard Korb (RK) and Peter Gagg (PG)…

The AMIS Score

RK: “Peter, you have been supporting maintenance organisations for more than 30 years and have accompanied many companies on their way to maintenance excellence. From your point of view, what makes the difference between companies that started the journey but faltered and those that were able to reach world-class level?”

PG: “I think we first have to explain to our audience what we mean by Maintenance Excellence and how the journey can be accompanied and measured. AMIS® has been available for more than 30 years - not only as an assessment tool for benchmarking the maintenance maturity level - but also as a database with more than 5,000 assessment results. The AMIS score can theoretically reach any value on the scale from 0 to 100. Anything above 75% is what we call ‘world-class’ and of course, the standard that must be met to achieve world-class has also increased over the years. We measure the maturity of the organisation by reviewing the structure and processes in alignment with ISO55001 and the European standards EN 13306 (Maintenance Technology), EN 13460 (Documents for Maintenance), EN 15341 (Maintenance KPIs) and thus determine the AMIS score.

“Let me come back to your initial question though. In order to succeed in this journey, several things are needed. In every case, it is vitally important that top management is fully behind it. This can happen in very different ways. On the one hand, it can be a strong personal commitment to support the change. But it can also be by giving employees the freedom to develop and implement the improvements. It also has to be the right balance of patience, curiosity and motivation to see positive outcomes. Whatever the driving factors, it requires staying power…taking at least 2-3 years to reach World-Class level.”

The Willingness

RK: “I can definitely agree that. If there is not the willingness to drive this program forward continuously, over several years, with healthy, determined steps, the euphoria experienced at the beginning can turn into a flash in the pan with scorched earth. In addition to perseverance, I see something else important that has helped us massively to be successful: Low fluctuation in staff changes - both in the project team and among the sponsors.”

PG (laughs): “I can remember all too well one of our first programs. The one site struck me as a cross between "Groundhog Day" and "Run Lola Run". No sooner had the project team been assembled and the sponsors convinced of the plan, than a restructuring sent us back to the starting line! Do you remember!? Finally, we had to start 3 times at the one location in the USA.”

Learning from Failure

RK: “But one thing we have already learned from these stumbling blocks, we now always set up our sponsor team in such a way that the departure or promotion of a single person has less impact on the program. Even in the project team with Champions and Workstream Leaders, we work with added nominated deputies, from the start. This makes our programs much more robust and, in reality, doesn't then require further resources.”

PG: “The recurring assessments every 12 to 18 months are also very important. On the one hand, it is easier to keep the focus on the journey and on the other hand, it is a very good opportunity to make visible what has been achieved in the whole of Operations and thus motivates everyone to continue.”

RK: “But it's not just the assessments, they are too far apart for that. It is also the breaking down of tasks into work packages and then further into manageable parts. As I constantly say “How do you eat a whole cornfield? Corn cob by corn cob!”

Full Co-operation

PG: “I would like to draw our readers’ attention to another stumbling block. Maintenance Excellence programs are very often seen as a task for the maintenance department that no one else has anything to do with. However, successful maintenance organisation requires breaking down silo thinking and having the full cooperation of production, engineering, purchasing and finance.”

RK: “Don't forget the tailwind that quality assurance can provide.” (Peter nods)

RK: “Let me say something else about program launches. We keep forgetting how frustrating it can be to get an organisation, often a huge global organisation, moving! We can set up implementation plans and formulate work packages, and still nothing moves. Step by step, we have to outline a possible path and then again find internal people to add and implement what we have prepared. It also takes a lot of conversations so that it's not just people in the maintenance department taking responsibility for sub-projects in this program.”

PG: “Review meetings at the individual operating sites and at the global level ensure that attention is maintained. After all, there is always the competition for resources with other business activities.”

RK: “It also helps a great deal to use every little step forward at one of the sites to alert other sites that activity is needed.”

Communication and Motivation

PG: “It has a lot to do with communication and motivation. Initial successes and the attention of others give strength to take further steps. How often have we experienced that the work package tasks were simply worked through and no one expected that something would come out of it, that would put them ahead of the other sites. Suddenly, the others become interested in the result? I am as happy as a child every time I witness the pride of the employees when delegations from other sites come to see what has been achieved.”

RK: “This is particularly evident at sites that feel they have a lot of catching up to do. They don't expect to suddenly be far ahead in a certain area.

“The assessment results are definitely visible to everyone. This also has an effect on the organisations management team. There is often a great deal of mistrust, especially toward the sites that perform better. When these are visited, it is so important to emphasize that it is not the job of the visitor to find reasons why the good site's assessment result needs to be adjusted downward. The focus must be to take away as many good ideas as possible and thus become even better.”

Healthy Competition

PG: “The assessments definitely create competition between the sites. In sporting terms, this can encourage top performance. However, we must always be aware that excessive competition can lead to holding back and hiding achievements from other sites. When that happens, competition becomes unhealthy.”

RK: “When that occurs, I explain that the goal is not to organise maintenance at one site better than at the other sites by highlighting the other sites lower standard. Rather, the goal is to achieve a competitive advantage over the competitors for the entire company, through excellent maintenance. It doesn't help at all to put obstacles in each other's way internally.”

Sustainable Success

PG: “How true! Another risk for sustainable success is that corporate staff units have learned a lot themselves after the first assessment. This makes it easy for them to imagine conducting the assessments themselves and internally in the future. In doing so, they underestimate the advantage that an external facilitator can bring from sharing their experience with other companies. In virtually all cases, where ongoing self assessment is opted for, it has reduced the focus on the program, causing very limited sustainability and a decrease in maintenance performance.”

RK: “Peter thank you for your time. However, before we part, let's put together the essential success factors.”

The Essential Success Factors:

Define the reason and the importance of the program at the start and communicate this to the entire staff at the site/s
Support by Operations management
Regular communication
Make advantages of the programme and progress visible
Celebrate and honour successes
Work smarter not harder
Do not start everything at the beginning
Low turnover or robust program organisation with deputies for all work streams
Endurance as it will be a 2-3 years‘ journey
Creation of essential roles such as maintenance planner and reliability engineer, programme leader and workstream leaders
Full involvement of the production and engineering teams
Recurring assessments
Semi-annual reviews of work stream deliverables - between assessments.
Learning from the other sites ("Steal with Pride")