Who was it that said “it’s the economy, stupid”? (Was it President Clinton?)

In maintenance, it has always been,” it’s the budget” and as a service provider, we have certainly had some very “challenging” requests (well,demands really) from some in our customer base due to “the budget”.

Would it be fair to say that for maintenance managers, a commonly used approach is to budget for 12 months and then re-forecast at shorter intervals of 1 month? S. Carlile of Assetitvy Pty Ltd. says that what we need to improve is how we perform the re-forecasting. Then how we manage the subsequent spending during that forecast period.

When gathering the information for the new forecast we must include information from the following sources:

• The original Budget
• The planned work in the CMMS
• Rectification/breakdown work and opportunities in the CMMS
• Expected parts deliveries in the purchasing system and any outstanding commitments not received in the previous period
• Information on possible work from production and maintenance supervisors, planners, Engineering and others

Stuart reckons that we have to monitor expenditure and compliance to plan on a regular basis (no disagreements there). He says “ At Best Practice level this would be on a daily basis but at a minimum should be performed on at least a weekly basis.”

Anyone out there who is reviewing their maintenance budget on a DAILY basis. ie.  Key stake holders (not just you on your own looking at figures on a screen) need to meet early, in the morning for a daily process or the beginning of the week for weekly reviews?

Ledet who is ex Dupont, says that in the ” Du Pont benchmark study, the most reliable performance in the world was Total Productive Maintenance. It was also the least expensive to achieve and sustain. ”

Then he goes on to say that “  The conventional wisdom is that maintenance best practices are planning, scheduling, preventative maintenance, optimized procurement, and predictive maintenance. ”

I’d say that some form of continuous improvement process has to be a given too. Otherwise, the best that we can hope for is that the performance will stay the same – and who would be happy with that?