Maintenance Department Overlooked? Blow Your Horn!

If you maintain equipment and machinery this is for you. In my travels I notice that many maintenance departments are still unsung and uncelebrated within their companies. Maintenance almost never gets a mention in the corporate annual report. Do you agree with this statement?

When I engage a plant or fleet manager directly, they can usually speak to the importance of maintenance. Many however cannot speak to the top level initiatives that the maintenance department is carrying out. That's not good. It either means that maintenance doesn't have any specific initiatives (I sure hope they have some) or that they don't promote them and communicate them within the company. At some level we all know that machinery doesn't run for very long without talented and motivated people maintaining it. Awareness of this fact comes to the forefront when breakdowns have been frequent. When machinery has been running well on a consistent basis the significant role that maintenance plays can quickly become overlooked.

Start small if you must, just get started! Doing what? Blowing your horn! If maintenance wants the respect and attention of the company's top management, it has to report. Don't leave it just to the numbers stored inside the corporate database to do your reporting. Yes those numbers probably yield useful data on maintenance costs and various downtime metrics. By themselves however, they won't communicate your passion and your vision and your long term thinking. Passion and vision is the stuff that when combined with the numbers will eventually get you new predictive tools, specialized training, renovated machine shop space or perhaps even a raise. Even if it takes a while before some of these tangible items make it through the budgeting process, pursuing and communicating the vision of your maintenance department can be rewarding by itself.

There isn't a plant or fleet manager out there that won't be interested in hearing about what you are doing to be more resourceful or to work more efficiently and collaboratively as a department. The manager will also welcome your initiatives to extend the life of machinery, make it more energy efficient, more productive, or more reliable. You will also earn some positive attention for your communication and leadership if you can keep it going. Don't be discouraged if you are a maintenance department of just two or three people, or even just one guy. Set your goal in 2009 to communicate monthly or quarterly to your managers.