Maintenance Technology September 2017 - 8

ON THE FLOOR

An outlet for the views of
today's maintenance
& reliability professionals

Playing the Blame Game:
What Wastes Your Time?
Jane Alexander
Managing Editor

Who among us isn't as efficient in our personal
and work lives as we would like? Who can't
identify any number of things that, whether they
are within our control or otherwise, are eating
into our efficiency?
That's what we asked our MT Reader Panelists
to discuss this month: those pesky work-related
time wasters that prevent them and/or
their teams (or their client/customers'
teams) from accomplishing more
important things. We received
several responses, some of
which called out the usual
suspects, i.e., meetings,

time-wasting issues mainly

Our institution has had a budget problem
for a several years. Our maintenance-related
time-wasting issues stem mainly from not being
allowed to obtain parts until they're needed. For
example, if we plan to change a building's air
filters, we're supposed to order what we need two
weeks before we start. If the lead time is longer
than two weeks or the cost exceeds the purchase
cap, we can be delayed another two weeks or
longer.
The same can be said about almost all other
maintenance parts. Our only other option is if we
can get someone to approve purchase orders that
would let us go straight to a vendor and pick up
needed items as soon as possible. But there's no
guarantee that we can get that type of approval. It
depends on what needs to be done.

stem from not being

Industry Supplier, Southeast. . .

'Our maintenance-related

allowed to obtain parts until
they're needed.'
and some that pointed to
other culprits. Some Panelists
went into far more detail than
we are able to include in these pages.
Here's what we asked:

What aspect or factor directly or
indirectly associated with Reliability
or Maintenance wasted their time and/
or the time of others at their site (i.e.,
interfered with the ability to accomplish,
in a timely manner, other, moreimportant things)?

The answers on these pages have been edited
for brevity and clarity. Additional insight can
be found in an expanded online version of this
column at maintenancetechnology.com.

Plant Engineer, Institutional
Facilities, Midwest. . .

MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY

As a supplier of predictive-maintenance
(PdM) services, we find that the majority of
our customers, driven from a management
standpoint, are focused entirely on the bottom
line. That means routine PdM activities are often
shelved due to production demands. Supply
and demand dictate how management views
PdM activities, and, frequently, even planned
outages are postponed so facilities can meet
their goals.
[In my opinion] this problem will always
haunt maintenance personnel and, all too often,
will result in emergency repairs and lost production. Discussions, with an attempt to educate
upper management, typically fall on deaf ears,
and even catastrophic failures have short-lived
impacts. This is a conundrum that likely will
never go away since, in most manufacturing
facilities, management does not see preventive/
predictive maintenance as a cost-savings mechanism, but rather as time and money lost.

Industry Consultant, International. . .

From what I see with my clients, much time and
SEPTEMBER 2017

http://www.maintenancetechnology.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Maintenance Technology September 2017