… excellence in training for over 40 years
Institute of Maintenance Management Education (IMME) operates as a frontline training and consultancy organization for excellence and productivity of Maintenance Management in industry and offers various training programmes & courses for the benefit of maintenance managers, engineers and technical personnel.
With a view to gain insight to best maintenance practices and pave way for higher maintenance productivity and reduction in maintenance & manufacturing costs, it’s imperative for maintenance managers, engineers and technical personnel to keep themselves updated in new dimensions of maintenance management functions. IMME facilitates achieving this objective through various training programmes, courses & services.
The maintenance of plant equipment is a key activity in any manufacturing organization. In order to attain top performance in maintaining its assets, a company needs a comprehensive approach that depends on the integration of people, plant and processes. The maintenance organization needs to be efficient, well organized, cost-effective and innovative to realize smooth operations and higher uptime.
Maintenance excellence is uncommon, and improving maintenance effectiveness requires continuous effort. Although every organization has its own story, maintenance under performance typically stems from the fact that maintenance effectiveness is difficult to measure and achieving maintenance excellence requires a consistent, disciplined approach that cannot happen on its own. Maintenance organizations forever need to be infused with greater professionalism to be world class.
Maintenance effectiveness, in fact, requires more than just earnest effort. It requires a well-designed set of processes and procedures that together make up a consistent system for managing the entire maintenance function. Such a system doesn’t emerge spontaneously – it must be created and implemented with both the big picture and the front-line specifics in mind. More than other areas of manufacturing organizations, maintenance requires a tailored approach and set of tools and processes to take the guesswork out of performance management.
When organizations get it right, effective maintenance management becomes the rising tide that lifts up the company’s performance. Some of the compelling benefits of world-class maintenance include consistently higher uptime & OEE; better value of money spent on maintenance; lower parts inventory & reduced waste; better time efficiency in maintenance jobs & projects; greater transparency; both efficient and effective managers, engineers, supervisors & technicians; etc.
Many companies operate some of the most sophisticated technology, high capital cost equipment, all of which needs maintaining to exacting quality standards and to high end user availability. The industry is frequently faced with pressures to reduce costs and improve quality. This has led to a number of organizations reappraising objectives, methods and embracing best practices in maintenance management in their plants. The importance of having a maintenance strategy, which enables to improve maintenance performance in a way that supports the overall economic goals of the company, cannot be over-emphasized.
Maintenance management requires best practices that enable an organization to avoid failures, breakdown maintenance work and other barriers to success while maintaining safe, reliable operations and minimizing total maintenance cost. Best practices facilitate availability of plant and its assets to meet customer’s needs on schedule and the desired cost.
Employing best practices in the areas of maintenance and reliability help an organization in many ways, such as shown below:
- Higher output with the existing plant & machinery
- Reduced maintenance cost per unit
- Reduced total cost per unit
- Improved performance – cost, productivity and safety
- Enhanced competitiveness
- Bigger market share, etc.
When implemented appropriately, best maintenance practices lead to improved performance and efficiency of maintenance functions in industry. Organizations need to understand clearly that maintenance performance cannot be enhanced on a sustainable basis without the proper support and application of the best practices. Best practices in maintenance management become imperative for realizing greater economy in the overall business operations.
Further, the life-blood of maintenance is based on carrying the right tasks at the right time both with speed & skill in a cost-effective manner. The sophistication and complexity of today’s manufacturing equipment and controls has led to the recognition that installations require dedicated, professional maintenance management which should be adaptable to the changing requirements. Well-organized maintenance functions contribute to higher plant availability with lower maintenance & manufacturing costs and assist in realizing ultimate goals of the company, notably, maximum return on investment.
There is now a growing awareness of the connection between maintenance and product quality, and increasing pressure to achieve higher plant availability and to contain costs. Maintenance people have to adopt completely new ways of thinking and acting as engineers and as managers. In the times of change, managers look for new approaches and productive methods for maintenance. They seek a strategic framework which synthesizes the new developments that they can adopt sensibly and apply those likely to be most value to them.