Globalization of markets and international competition put pressure on companies when it comes to efficiency and costs. For the industrial sector, nowadays, maintenance management is considered an important part of the corporate activities and a positive boost for production.
The effect of maintenance on market positioning
Carrying out efficient maintenance within a plant may reflect on several aspects of the company, obtaining competitive advantage. In fact, maintenance management contributes to the performances and the economical revenue of organizations, especially because any issue related to malfunctioning could lead to a potential financial loss.
Challenges increase proportionally with production, and a strong factor that affects maintenance is the nature and intensity of equipment failures in plants. System failures lead to a series of cascading consequences, first of all the forced stopping of the operations, while maintenance is carried out. In fact organizations aim at reducing, or even eliminating, the occurrence of any kind of breakdown.
Maintenance and productivity
Industrial maintenance by itself has two goals: keeping the costs low and the availability of equipment high. The work towards the achievement of these objectives has to start from having uninterrupted flows in the operations. Thus, maintenance management and maintenance planning are designed to control factors that bother productivity.
A dedicated team needs to be built to plan effective maintenance activities, in order to focus on practices and risk prediction. Not only engineers or technicians must be involved, but the responsibility must also pass to employers who work day by day in production and in contact with the machineries.
The benefits of maintenance management
There are several benefits of a successful implementation of a maintenance plan: it leads to an improved product quality and maximum capacity utilization. Moreover in this way the lifespan of equipment is extended, as it is checked and fixed before a fatal breakdown. All of these aspects have positive effects on the final customer satisfaction, while the company works on building confidence and reputation.
