Benchmarking your maintenance operations

Reduced staffing, inadequate budgets, Mahagony Row bean counters who just don't get it, a competent workforce heading into retirement sooner rather than later with nobody stepping up to replace them. Every industrial maintenance team facing these and other stressors wants to catch a break.

Benchmarking one’s maintenance operations against the best in the business can be a good way to compensate. Every plant must be doing something way better than most. It would be beneficial to know exactly what that might be. But, emotionally insecure personalities might decide anything they’re doing well is, by definition, a trade secret, not to be revealed under pain of terrible punishment of some sort.

So, how do you benchmark if nobody else is revealing what they’re doing? Everyone might recognize that benchmarking as a good thing, but nobody wants to go first. That policy seems to be self-defeating, don’t you agree?

We need to break the logjam and overcome the Catch 22. Why don’t you volunteer to take the first baby step and enter something interesting in the Plant Services Best Practice Award program?

I can’t imagine that everything you’re doing on the plant floor is deserving of a top secret security rating. Break the logjam and let the flood begin. Everyone benefits from your move.