Creating the Right Dynamic Between Operations and Maintenance

Creating the right dynamic between Operations and Maintenance in my organization is one of my biggest challenges. Today the relationship goes something like this:

Operations dictates when equipment can come out of service, criticality (all equipment is critical), and how long Maintenance has to work on it. The world revolves around Operations (note I said Operations not production). We have a production at any cost, mentality. Maintenance is subordinate to Operations and is looked at as a necessary nuisance. 

In good facilities, Maintenance and Operations are partners. Maintenance understands the need to keep equipment in operation and producing and Operations understands that maintenance is required for reliable equipment. When this is working well you see things like:

• Maintenance (or Engineering) can "take the keys away" from Operations to prevent equipment damage or potential bad consequences. Maintenance tells Operations that equipment is not fit to operate until some corrective action is taken.
• Operations will sacrifice short term production to "fix it right" when surprises happen. OR Maintenance will do a "quick fix" to get Operations through a critical period and then Operations will allow a scheduled maintenance activity to do the long term repair in the immediate future even if it impacts the production plan or the monthly numbers.
• Operations has a focus on equipment integrity and it appears on their scorecard. They have an active role in equipment asset management. They support PM and make the equipment available. They participate in troubleshooting and root cause analysis.
• The organization has a common understanding of risk and has a process to take reasonable risks.
• People trust that "the other guy", especially the one in a different department, knows his job, knows what he is doing and will act in the company's best interest.

So, if your dynamic is like mine, what can you, as a leader, do to make move it in the right direction?  Some of the key charactistics of good management structures, work processes, and systems are:

• Responsibilities are clear and accountability is expected.
• There is formal and informal auditing ("trust and verify").  Good auditing is helpful and used for coaching.  Bad auditing is used for keeping score.
• Metrics are in place.  Metrics are hard to fudge.  Metrics drive the right behaviors.  There are only a few key metrics for each job function.
• Set performance expectations and expect your people to meet them.  

As a leader, you also must show visible commitment by doing things like:

• Having a monthly "equipment integrity" review as part of the monthly operating and financial reviews.  
• You should be looking at how many PM's did not get done and asking why?
• You should have a formal review of the root cause analysis findings done in the past month.
• Ask the right kinds of questions:  Did we expect this to happen?  What could we do to prevent it from happening in the future?  Were we properly prepared for this?