Building a Strong Operations‑Maintenance Partnership for Sustainable Production

In this article I examine the critical link between operations, maintenance and engineering, focusing specifically on the operations‑maintenance dynamic. I have addressed this topic before, but the recurring questions make a refresher worthwhile.

Often, the relationship between operations and maintenance is antagonistic rather than collaborative. Operations tends to see maintenance as a customer service provider, while maintenance is viewed as a supplier. In such a scenario, operations bears the cost of the maintenance work it requests, yet in practice this responsibility is frequently ignored. When maintenance budgets are exceeded, the maintenance manager is the one who must explain the variance, creating friction and eroding trust.

Customer‑service dynamics also lead to emotional prioritisation: the customer wants a job done, the supplier says “yes, sir,” and the work gets done, even if it’s not the most critical task. This can result in poor communication, finger‑pointing, and a lack of confidence between the two departments. I’ll concentrate on what you can do to turn this relationship around.

Agree on a Shared Goal

Start by defining the business purpose of each department. For a manufacturer, the common objective is clear: both operations and maintenance must work as equal partners to produce the product in the most cost‑effective way. The classic metric for this is Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE), calculated as Time Efficiency × Quality Performance × Speed Performance. I recommend renaming it Overall Production Efficiency (OPE) to emphasise that the goal is shared, not departmental.

Adopting OPE means abandoning the practice of categorising lost production by department (mechanical, electrical, instrumentation, operations). If you continue to report losses by department—95 % of the industry does— you reinforce blame rather than root‑cause resolution. Instead, implement a problem‑solving process that focuses on why problems occur, not who caused them:

• Collect high‑cost problems—safety, environmental, lost production, or high maintenance costs.
• Select which problems to tackle.
• Assign a problem owner.
• Form a cross‑functional team.
• Solve the problem.
• Document the solution.
• Educate the broader organisation.

By focusing on root causes, you empower autonomous learning and remove a major barrier to collaboration. You’ll soon realise that many issues are hybrid, involving both how equipment is operated and how it is maintained.

Establish the Right Focus

In a partnership, maintenance delivers equipment reliability; operations delivers process reliability. Reliability can be defined as “quality production output at expected speed without downtime, personal injury, or environmental damage” – essentially OPE. It can be quantified as MTBPL/MPL, where:

• MTBPL = Mean Time Between Production Losses
• MPL = Mean Production Loss

Using “production loss” instead of the more common MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) emphasises operational as well as equipment issues. If you focus on reliability, you’ll naturally achieve sustainable, lower maintenance costs.

To quantify the financial impact of reliability improvements, estimate the average market price of your product mix over the last five years and subtract the variable cost. For example, a pulp mill that sells at $700/ton with a variable cost of $340/ton earns $360/ton in contribution margin.

By continuously increasing MTBPL and decreasing MPL, you raise the reliability factor. Suppose the mill’s bottleneck is the bleach plant with an OPE of 84 %. A 5 % increase in throughput would add 25 000 tons, worth $9 million per year. With a maintenance cost of $87/ton ($43.5 million annually), a 5 % cost reduction equals $2.175 million – 24 % of the additional revenue. Clearly, reliability should be the joint focus.

A Joint Venture Approach

Aligning operations and maintenance as equal partners requires a new set of practices:

• Agree on the shared goal of OPE.
• Focus on total reliability, which drives both revenue and sustainable maintenance savings.
• Eliminate departmental loss classifications.
• Involve operators in basic inspections.
• Agree on work‑request priorities.
• Communicate production plans regularly.
• Create a single, coordinated shutdown schedule.

Personal relationships matter, but without the right processes the partnership will collapse back into a less efficient model.

Include Operators in Inspections

When practical, operators should perform basic equipment inspections. If training can be delivered in less than 15 minutes, it should be offered. For example, a back tender can inspect a rotary steam joint’s carbon ring in under five minutes, ensuring early detection of wear.

Agree on Work‑Request Priorities

Maintenance should start with a work request, not a work order. If a request becomes an order, execution must follow jointly agreed priorities. Developing these priorities together with operations is one of the most effective ways to cement the partnership. Requesters should document the maintenance opportunity as part of the standard work‑request form.

Promoting the Partnership

1. Communicate Production Plans – Post weekly and update daily. This enables scheduling maintenance around production, especially for processes with variable outputs (e.g., paperboard machines).
2. Identify Maintenance Opportunities – Work with operations to list all opportunities, assign codes, and integrate them into work requests. This deepens process knowledge and opens more maintenance windows.
3. Unified Shutdown Schedule – Maintain a single, cross‑departmental shutdown schedule rather than separate ones for operations, mechanical, etc.
4. Integrate Operating Practices into Prevention – Include operational procedures (e.g., pump swapping, steam system warm‑up) in the preventive maintenance program to avoid last‑minute fixes.

Vision and Mission Statements

Vision and mission statements should reflect the partnership ethos. A vision statement describes where the organisation wants to be; a mission statement explains why it exists. In our meeting, we agreed that maintenance’s mission is “to deliver cost‑effective equipment reliability,” operations’ mission is “to deliver cost‑effective process reliability,” and the joint mission is “to deliver cost‑effective production reliability.”

Current Best Practices Document

The maintenance vision is built on Current Best Practices (CBP). Each key process—leadership, planning, preventive maintenance, technical database, stores management, root‑cause elimination—has defined sub‑processes. For example, the planning sub‑process includes work‑request scope and equipment identification. The CBP document establishes a benchmark; the goal is an average of 80/100 by 2025. Achieving this will raise reliability and lower maintenance costs, but only through true collaboration with operations and engineering.