Developing a Vision for Maintenance Management

A Vision is where you want to be and how you will operate into the future and for a Maintenance department should be looking at around 3 years out. The vision can relate to physical issues such as, replacing redundant equipment, or it can be philosophy or cultural issues such as “We will follow the 80/20 principle”. The development of a vision will lead you into setting plans, objectives and measures which then becomes your business plan. If you don’t have this plan for the future then there will be no improvement. To remain competitive a culture of continuous improvement must be in place. What are the steps related to developing a vision and a business plan?

1. Understand the Vision goals for the overall business. Your vision should be aligned to this.
2. Review all of the components of maintenance management, understand your short fall in each area, and determine where you can make the largest improvements (Biggest bang for your buck). Be realistic about how much work you can take on over the life of the plan. Ensure your objectives can be met considering cost and labor constraints. Focus on improving systems as much as possible as often you get more gains by changing the way you do things. It’s also usually a lot cheaper.
3. Tabulate your vision into categories related to your planned objectives, the strategies you are going to use to meet your objectives, who is responsible for each task and when you expect to have the task completed.
4. Write specifications for the tasks you are planning to complete over the life of the plan.
5. Review your plan regularly to make sure it is still relevant to your situation.