What Are the Challenges Faced by Maintenance Managers?

Maintenance is important for every business. When our vehicle does not work or a breakdown occurs, we don't just sell our vehicles as we know that is not a wise decision.

Similarly, in an organization, a maintenance manager faces several maintenance challenges!

What Are the Challenges Faced by Maintenance Managers?

The challenges faced by maintenance managers are discussed below:

1. Unplanned Maintenance

Unplanned maintenance is not good for business, it takes place when an unexpected breakdown occurs. Informal and quick actions are taken to address the issue and resolve them. In this process inspection, repairing, old or burnt parts are removed and new spare parts are installed. These types of activities are done in this process. Unplanned downtime is the result of wrong anticipation or non-anticipation at all.

2. Unscheduled Maintenance

Unscheduled maintenance and unplanned maintenance do sound similar but they are different. For instance, unplanned maintenance is unexpected and there is no planning for the event. Unscheduled maintenance is planned but there is no scheduling done such as deciding a particular time allocation, technician allocation, what activities need to be done, and so on! This is one of the most common challenges for maintenance managers.

Also Read: What Are the Various Tools Used in Predictive Maintenance?

3. Manual Process

In maintenance, part accuracy is very important one small error can lead to machine failure. It can impact the efficiency of employees and machines as well.

Most of the work is affected due to the manual process and when human is involved chances of errors increases. When things are done manually, you don't get accurate data, and when decisions are made on manual data.

Then, most chances are that it will not get you expected results. Therefore, the manual practice shall be avoided as it is not reliable.

4. Budget Issues

Managers try to balance expenditure on labor cost, inventory, service expenses, etc. The management and managers always have conflict about the budget as the management thinks that it is unnecessary expenses.

However, in these cases, the maintenance manager needs to make the management understand how it will be beneficial for them in the long run. Once the budget problem is sorted many problems will be automatically resolved.

5. Increasing Asset Productivity

Increasing productivity is one of the main challenges that a manager faces. To do so, managers need to shift from reactive maintenance to proactive maintenance.

Sometimes due to the management proactive maintenance is not implemented. However, the manager can show real-world scenarios.

For instance, as per the blog  “A company can save between 12-18% using preventive maintenance over reactive maintenance. Every dollar spent on preventive maintenance will save you five dollars on other expenses”

6. Time Management

Time management is very important to deliver quality and productive work. But when you have lots of tasks in your daily activities such as meeting with other teams, assigning tasks to maintenance teams, reading e-mails, speaking with the vendor for inventories. Some unpredicted events also occur such as asset failure.

Therefore, the maintenance team and manager need to prioritize their daily task especially maintenance tasks.

Also Read: Best Practices for Issue Tracking Software to Boost Corrective Maintenance

What Is the Solution to All These Issues?

The solution to all these issues is computer maintenance management software! Lots of problems of maintenance managers can be solved with this software! This software is not expensive so management will not have to worry about the cost. Some important points of the software are discussed below!

1. Scheduled Maintenance

This software keeps track of assets and all the information related to every asset stored in it such as when maintenance was provided to a particular asset. You can schedule maintenance depending on the utilization of the asset. If the asset is used frequently for several hours, you can schedule maintenance on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Furthermore, with this software, the maintenance team and manager do not have to remember manually as this software allows to set a reminder for maintenance.

2. Preventive Maintenance

This software emphasizes preventive maintenance. When you insist on preventive maintenance it results in decreased chances of asset failure. It makes the asset more reliable furthermore it can increase asset life as well.

3. Eliminating Manual Process

Another benefit is that it removes the manual process and makes it automated without compromising accuracy. When the process is automated lots of errors and mistakes are reduced. The data you will collect with this software will be accurate and this data can also play a crucial role in deciding long-term goals and the decision-making process.

4. Task & Activity Prioritization

When time management is a challenge, maintenance managers need to prioritize tasks as it can help in increasing the productivity of employees. To decide the prioritization of work, asset categorization is important.

For instance, assets that are crucial for daily activities and without these assets work will be delayed those assets can have higher priority. Those assets which are not much important compared to other assets can be kept in low-priority assets.

Conclusion

Maintenance is one of the main pillars that every organization should focus on. Maintenance can shrink your profit margin that is why maintenance shall not be ignored because it can result in sudden asset failure and that can lead to business loss.

CMMS is a type of asset management software that can help your business by saving unnecessary expenses.

Furthermore, this software is cloud-based, which means you get data security as well. It keeps data in an encrypted way that means you don't have to worry about data security as security will be the responsibility of the service provider. The software has a lot of potentials to make everything organized. It can help you in staying ahead of the curve.

Also Read: Tips & Practices for Better Maintenance Management for an Organization

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. How asset tracking is done?

‍For accurate asset tracking, tags and labels are used. They help to provide an accurate location of each asset. Furthermore, they can also assist in gathering other types of information of assets. For this purpose asset tracking technologies are used i.e. Barcode, QR code (Quick Response Code), RFID (Radio-frequency identification), etc.

2. How does maintenance can contribute to business growth?‍

All information shall be at your fingertips to make quick and effective decisions. Big Companies need to make quick decisions. They cannot afford sudden asset failure because time is money.

3. What will be the benefits of the software?‍

The benefits of the software are as follow:
1. Increased uptime.
2. Boosting asset performance.
3. Maximized asset life.
4. Decreased upkeep expenses.
5. Improved asset tracking.
6. Reliable assets.
7. Automated process.
8. Detail asset reports.
9. Inventory tracking.
10. Improved bottom line.