Effective Maintenance Leadership: Building Processes and Enabling Performance – Part 2

In Part 1 of this series on maintenance leadership, we highlighted two foundational concepts for maintenance leaders.

1. Maintenance leaders must have a clear vision of where they are heading to lead effectively.

2. Leadership is about influencing others to act in alignment with that vision.

Let’s expand on that second point.

To inspire people to perform at their best, you must continuously build business processes that enable them. As a maintenance leader, you need to recognize that people can never be more effective than the system they work in.

In a recent Web survey of 442 maintenance leaders, IDCON asked: “How much time does your maintenance planners spend actually planning maintenance work?” Sixty percent of the respondents said less than 30 % of planners’ time is spent on planning work, while 26 % reported less than 10 %.

Figure 1. Survey respondents were asked, “How much time do your maintenance planners spend on actual planning of maintenance work?”

In a follow‑up survey, we asked, “Why do planners not plan?” With 11 possible reasons, the top three were:

1. Too many emotional priorities that could wait, breaking the schedule.

2. Too many urgent jobs caused by equipment breakdowns.

3. Operations does not support the planning process.

In this scenario, leaders must define clear roles and responsibilities for planners and the entire planning and scheduling team, and then enforce those processes. Collaboration with operations, stores, and engineering is essential to agree on work‑order priority rules, schedule cut‑off times, critical equipment and spare parts, and more.

Success hinges on institutionalizing enablers that empower the plant’s workforce.

Walk the Talk
Employees mirror your actions more than your words. It’s essential to “walk the talk” by consistently following the plans, best practices, and enablers you set in place.

For example, a leader who starts meetings late or repeatedly asks for last‑minute work will struggle to embed reliable scheduling practices. Likewise, expecting world‑class craftsmanship without training, financial support, time, standards, or clear expectations is unrealistic.

If you are a true maintenance leader, ensure every improvement initiative is grounded in a solid plan that weighs costs and benefits before engaging the entire organization. Unfortunately, many plants fall into a cycle of short‑lived projects—often dubbed “project of the month”—only to be replaced by a new effort within a few months.

During a plant visit a few years ago, I noted that reliability improvements should be an ongoing journey. A craftsperson remarked that in that plant, “forever” equated to eight weeks, as the average lifespan of a new improvement initiative was about eight weeks. While the comment had a humorous tone, it highlighted a real issue: initiatives are often abandoned too quickly.

Stay tuned for Part 3 of this discussion in the next issue of Reliable Plant.

Torbjörn (Tor) Idhammar is partner and vice president of reliability and maintenance management consulting at IDCON Inc. His responsibilities include training and implementation support for preventive maintenance/essential care and condition monitoring, planning and scheduling, spare parts management, and root‑cause problem elimination. He is the author of “Condition Monitoring Standards” (volumes 1‑3). He earned a B.S. in industrial engineering from North Carolina State University and an M.S. in mechanical engineering from Lund University (Sweden). Contact Tor at 800‑849‑2041 or e‑mail info@idcon.com.
Management Consultants in Reliability and Maintenance – IDCON
www.idcon.com