In most commercial facilities, departments operate largely as operational silos with very little communication among them. This is especially true of the maintenance team. Most maintenance team members are not seen until an emergency happens or a preventative repair must be scheduled. They are brought in and swiftly brought out, with very little communication afterward. The staff does not communicate recurring problems until the maintenance team shows up to repair a major emergency. This can lead to inefficiencies at every level.
New management systems have been fighting this mindset for decades. New lean management systems, holistic leadership training, and other systems thinking approaches constantly combat the siloed-department approach, and yet it still persists in most corporate enterprises today. The best way to combat this is to first think of your team as a single unit, working for one common goal.
Your common goal may be different from one organization to the next, but it should be something everyone on your team is aiming for daily. If you manage a manufacturing facility, everyone is focused on the output of quality products and efficient systems management. Both the marketing team and maintenance technicians are focusing on quality and efficiency at every level. In contrast, if you run a reputation, your primary focus is maintaining a high reputation and steady foot traffic. The maintenance team assists in this mission just as your wait staff does.
Aligning your goals and communicating those goals to every member of your team is critical to creating an efficient maintenance system. Building trust between departments is also essential for work order management systems. If your departments do not rely on the maintenance staff for preventative care, they will wait to report issues until they become emergencies. This will get in the way of your maintenance goals and cause more headaches for everyone involved.
Once you’ve aligned your goals and encouraged proper communication, it’s important to create reward systems that encourage the attainment of company goals at the individual level. Your employees must first understand how their job functions for the greater purpose of the system. Then, create systems of reward that can guide employees toward both the daily tasks that complete these goals.
These systems will not only help you align goals among departments, but will strengthen the overall performance of your facility at the personal and mechanical levels alike. To learn more about maintenance systems improvement, contact your local MaintenX team today.
