Computerised Maintenance Management Systems, CMMS, and Enterprise Asset Management, EAM, system have gained a lot of attention in recent years. CMMS and EAM systems ARE important, since it is cumbersome and almost impossible to manage maintenance in a modern plant without an IT system. But these systems are still only tools and in order to use them properly there must be an underlying maintenance strategy in balance with a clearly defined maintenance organisation. We must also remember that the “maintenance department” is not an island, but a part of a bigger organisation. Maintenance management must be coordinated with other company activities, such as production, quality control and environmental and safety objectives, since these issues are truly connected, have big effect on each other and can never be fully separated. Maintenance professionals tend to, only have time to, or are only allowed to have a narrow viewpoint, with focus on maintenance, while other professionals focus on other issues.

“Audit” is usually understood as inspection of company’s accounts. The purpose is of course to fulfil obligations but first and foremost to make sure the financial side of the company is in good health and, if not, to identify weaknesses. So in a way we are running a check on the financial side of the company in order to find out how we are doing and where improvements are needed. Even though financial audit is important, we must understand that it can not identify root causes for success or lack of success. In order to do so we must, at least from time to time, audit other aspects of managerial activities. Maintenance management audit with focus on maintenance, while taking into consideration the company as a whole, can return a great value for many companies by improving internal collaboration, effectiveness, safety, reliability, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and by lowering direct and indirect maintenance cost.

Maintenance audit can be executed in number of ways. The audit can be executed as an internal audit and/or by using external auditors, but remember: There are no magic solutions. It is however important to apply procedures that have been “thought through”, so it can be valuable to get help from consultants, at least in the beginning. These procedures can later be modified as needed. Other critical issues:

• Top leadership must understand the need, the goals and the selected approach
• Top leadership must specially understand that an audit in itself does not return value, there must be a follow-up work, where result from an audit are used to improve management.
• An audit group should be created within the company. The group will be responsible for organising audits and follow-up work. The members of the group must represent the various managerial activities that influence maintenance activities directly or indirectly.
• The group leader from should be respected as a “ champion”, a person that gets things done. The group leader should be a “maintenance – person” or a “production - person”.
• Avoid lengthy obscure meetings
• The group must be goal-oriented and determined to quickly return valuable results in order to become a respected part of the company and simply to be allowed to continue it’s work.
• Performance indicators must be defined and monitored
  

Guðmundur Jón Bjarnason, managing director at DMM Solutions, gjb@dmm.is