Tearing down fences … Can’t We All Get Along?
Maintenance Technology
February 2008
“It’s a typical quandary in asset-intensive production environments. Maintenance management is tasked with ensuring that production equipment operates at peak efficiency so that production targets can be met. But, production management is sometimes reluctant to turn over equipment for maintenance because the resulting downtime might negatively impact their ability to meet those same targets. Those responsible for maintenance then lament that they can’t access the equipment to perform essential maintenance activities. As those on both sides of the fence know, this conflict can become a vicious circle, resulting in both insufficient maintenance and inadequate or poor quality production throughput.
Coordinating production and maintenance can be a big challenge for an operation, but it doesn’t have to erupt in a range war. Effective peacemakers are out there, including those in the form of advanced software tools.”