Creating a Culture Change in Your Maintenance

CREATING A CULTURE
CHANGE IN YOUR
MAINTENANCE
DEPARTMENT
BY:
RICKY SMITH,
CMRP, CMRT, CRL
Creating a Culture Change in Your Maintenance Department
How to Create a Culture Change in your

Maintenance Department
By Ricky Smith CMRP
Is your maintenance crew in a reactive mindset? Check out a list of

qualifiers to find out and learn how to change it.
“Cost between World Class Maintenance vs Reactive Maintenance”
It’s difficult to manage a maintenance crew effectively in a reactive

environment. We’re either unaware we’re in a reactive mode or we don’t
know how to get out of it.
The following list of qualifiers determines if your crew is reactive:

•
• PM labor hours stay the same (or increase) and emergency labor hours
trend upward.
• PM work orders lack specifications, procedures and other data.
• Yesterday’s maintenance problems and reliability issues consume 90%
of daily maintenance meetings.
• The maintenance supervisor is a hero one day, and a no good the next.
• The maintenance supervisor must work late at least twice a week.
• Maintenance crews don’t know what equipment they’ll be working on
tomorrow.
• The maintenance supervisor routinely expedites parts for emergency
work.
1
• Equipment reliability issues prevent the plant from operating at

targeted capacity.
If these points seem too close to home, you’re probably operating in a

reactive maintenance environment. The challenges and obstacles you face
are many. I know, I was there and faced these issues daily. The toughest
challenge was a cultural one – my maintenance crew was resistant to
change.
Now, as a consultant, I find that in many plants neither Production nor

Maintenance feel responsible or accountable for equipment reliability.
Instead, the maintenance department focuses its effort on time-based PMs
that don’t work anyway, doing too much too soon and doing too little too
late.
Remember these words of wisdom: “You know you’re in reactive mode

when you continue to perform preventive maintenance on equipment that
continues to fail” or use the one shown below.
Also, I’ve found some plants never meet capacity projections. In fact, I’ve
seen management formally reduce production projections and even change
the name from “projections” to “stretch goals.” Shouldn’t we admit that if
we have a stretch goal, it really means we don’t believe we’ll ever meet it?
Nevertheless, as maintenance and manufacturing costs continue to rise for
no apparent reason, maintenance comes under pressure to do something
quickly.
2
So, quick fixes are tried and tried again, but they never really work reliably.
Maybe it is time to establish Maintenance Guiding Principles and follow
them.
So how do you get out of a downward spiral and move your crew from
reactive to proactive? I changed my crew’s behavior by convincing and
proving to them that there was a better way – being proactive in
maintenance. And, I had to convince them there was an easy way to get
there, and they would benefit personally from the change.
Before starting this culture change initiative, I had to gain support and
sponsorship from plant management. The only way to get that prerequisite
is to develop a compelling business case. Believe me, it will be compelling –
a reactive environment leaves big dollars sitting on the table.
Moving from reactive to proactive will reduce maintenance costs by at least
20%, depending on the severity of the problems. In addition, capacity will
increase because you’re improving reliability. I’ve seen asset reliability raise
capacity by as much as 10% to 15%.
Then, armed with management support, I needed true believers. I had to
prove to my crew that life was better in a proactive environment. To make
the biggest impact quickly, we took one of our worst performing assets and
focused on changing our process to improve its reliability. We changed the
day-to-day activities and behaviors of the people in Maintenance and
Operations and ensured that people understood what to do.
3
The people who operated and maintained the asset owned and executed the
asset reliability program, conducting proactive inspections at designated
frequencies. We got some expert help in developing the asset reliability
program (there are many work identification methodologies available). We
didn’t invest in heavy statistical analyses, nor did we use an abundance of
additional predictive technologies, but we validated those we had in place
when we developed the asset reliability program to ensure we were focused
on the right work.
Within six months, we had tuned up the reliability and performance of that
asset. We put key performance indicators in place to manage the process
and kept it going. The team knew they were successful, and they felt great.
The change had occurred. Sure, it was only one asset, but now others
wanted a ride on our success train.
We found the establishment of a Maintenance Dashboard helped motivate

everyone to focus on results along with knowing the “Score” of their
actions.
You don’t have to tolerate managing maintenance in a reactive mode.

Developing a proactive asset reliability program and focusing on a process
to implement it is the key to success in changing from a reactive
organization to a proactive one.
Questions? Rsmith@worldclassmaintenance.org
4
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CREATING A CULTURE

How to Create a Culture Change in your

Is your maintenance crew in a reactive mindset? Check out a list of

“Cost between World Class Maintenance vs Reactive Maintenance”

It’s difficult to manage a maintenance crew effectively in a reactive

The following list of qualifiers determines if your crew is reactive:

• Equipment reliability issues prevent the plant from operating at

If these points seem too close to home, you’re probably operating in a

Now, as a consultant, I find that in many plants neither Production nor

Remember these words of wisdom: “You know you’re in reactive mode

We found the establishment of a Maintenance Dashboard helped motivate

You don’t have to tolerate managing maintenance in a reactive mode.

Mobile-first maintenance management and

Paul D, Health and Safety Coordinator

An end-to-end solution for remote

The Maintenance Community Coalition was founded on the belief that

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