How to Address Maintenance Challenges: A Holistic Approach to Sustainable Success

In modern industrial facilities, maintenance plays a central role in ensuring reliable operations and economic efficiency. However, in many organizations its importance is still underestimated. Maintenance is often viewed merely as a reactive crisis-response function rather than being integrated into strategic planning at the management level. This results in a range of challenges that can negatively affect not only productivity but also long-term competitiveness. This article outlines the most common maintenance challenges and presents solution-oriented approaches to achieving more effective and efficient maintenance.

The Top 10 Maintenance Challenges and How to Address Them

Lack of a Solution-Oriented Approach

One of the most common challenges in maintenance is the tendency to focus on resolving acute issues instead of proactively developing sustainable solutions. Maintenance departments often concentrate too heavily on the secondary process of work management, rather than keeping the primary process and overall operational performance in focus. The solution lies in repositioning maintenance within the organizational structure. By integrating maintenance more closely into strategic decision-making, it can make a significant contribution to production optimization and improved operating results.

The Cost-Driven Image of Maintenance

Maintenance is often perceived primarily as a cost factor, reinforcing its negative image. This perception typically arises when maintenance fails to actively communicate its role and value to the organization. A paradigm shift is required: instead of emphasizing total maintenance costs, the focus should be on cost per unit of production. This helps make the contribution of maintenance to higher output and asset availability visible and measurable.

Imbalance Between Production and Maintenance

In many organizations, production is prioritized over maintenance, particularly when short-term maintenance actions are required. This can increase operational risks and lead to long-term asset damage. One effective approach is to integrate maintenance more closely into the production organization. This gives those responsible for overall results full visibility into all cost drivers and enables informed decisions that balance short-term needs with long-term benefits.

Lack of Partnership Between Production and Maintenance

Effective collaboration between production and maintenance is often hindered by insufficient training and limited management competencies within maintenance teams. To address this, maintenance personnel should receive continuous training and be equipped with the necessary management skills. This not only improves collaboration but also strengthens the internal positioning of maintenance, leading to greater recognition and better integration across the organization.

The “Lone Ranger” Role in Maintenance

Maintenance managers frequently focus exclusively on technical issues while neglecting management responsibilities and the integration of their department within the organization. This can be mitigated by appointing maintenance leaders with a strong management background. Maintenance managers must be not only technically skilled but also capable of strategically leading their department and integrating it effectively into the overall organization.

Maintenance as a Casualty of Reorganizations

During reorganizations and restructuring initiatives, maintenance is often among the first departments to face workforce reductions. Over time, this can lead to a shortage of qualified personnel and jeopardize production continuity, quality, and safety. Before reducing headcount, maintenance objectives should be clearly defined to determine how many resources are actually required to achieve these goals.

Undefined Objectives and Non-Measurable Results

Another common challenge is the lack of clearly defined goals, which makes maintenance performance difficult to measure. This limits the department’s ability to evaluate its effectiveness and demonstrate its value to the organization. Software solutions can help by structuring processes, measuring results, and generating reports that make maintenance performance transparent.

Implementing Concepts Without Operational Relevance

Too often, new and fashionable maintenance concepts are introduced without critically assessing their relevance to the specific operation. Rather than relying blindly on a single methodology, organizations should implement a continuous asset management improvement cycle that integrates different maintenance concepts and leverages their respective strengths.

Lack of Prioritization in Maintenance Activities

Many maintenance activities are performed out of routine without questioning their actual necessity. This results in inefficiencies and missed opportunities to address critical maintenance tasks in a timely manner. A targeted maintenance strategy based on a thorough analysis of assets and their failure risks can significantly improve prioritization and overall effectiveness.

Outsourcing Maintenance Tasks to External Providers

Outsourcing maintenance activities can be beneficial when it involves specialized tasks that are not economically feasible to perform in-house. However, it is essential to ensure that core maintenance activities remain internal in order to protect company-specific know-how and retain control over critical processes.

Conclusion

Maintenance is a critical success factor for any organization and should not be viewed merely as a cost center, but as a strategic resource. By integrating maintenance more closely into the corporate structure, defining clear objectives, and applying modern management methods, organizations can play a key role in strengthening their competitiveness.