Maintenance and Production: Cooperation or Constant Conflict?


Maintenance and Production: Cooperation or Constant Conflict?

In a modern industrial environment where every second counts, the relationship between production and maintenance is often fraught with tension. The core issue stems from production's goal of maximizing operational time, while maintenance aims to ensure equipment reliability through scheduled downtimes. Consequently, these two areas frequently have conflicting interests, despite the fact that neither can function effectively without the other.

The Two Main Areas of Maintenance

In multinational corporations, maintenance is typically divided into two main categories:

1.     Operational Maintenance: This team ensures continuous plant operation. They are responsible for immediate troubleshooting and repairs in case of equipment failure, without which production could not continue.

2.     TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) or Planned Preventive Maintenance (PPM): This team handles preventive and scheduled maintenance activities aimed at minimizing unexpected failures and ensuring long-term equipment reliability.

Conflicts Between Production and Maintenance

The most common conflicts arise from the following factors:

·       Production Pressure: Production expects continuous operation and perceives maintenance downtimes as unnecessary losses.

·       Unplanned Downtimes: Any unexpected failure represents a loss for production, which is often blamed on the maintenance team.

·       Communication Issues: There is often insufficient coordination between production and maintenance, leading to unexpected disruptions due to scheduled maintenance activities.

How to Improve Collaboration?

1.     Defining Common Goals: Instead of operating as separate interest groups, they should jointly define objectives, such as minimizing downtime and increasing efficiency.

2.     Better Communication: Regular meetings and feedback loops are essential between the two teams to prevent surprises during scheduled maintenance or emergency repairs.

3.     Ensuring Adequate Resources: If maintenance is not properly supported with tools and workforce, it cannot perform its tasks effectively. Managers continuously monitor maintenance staffing levels and often question whether so many maintenance personnel are needed. One possible solution is to upskill the best operators in production through targeted training, developing them into machine setup specialists, thereby reducing the number of issues that require exclusive maintenance intervention and optimizing workforce allocation.

4.     Integrating Maintenance into Production Planning: If TPM and production managers collaboratively plan maintenance tasks, necessary downtimes can be scheduled with minimal disruption to production.

Production and maintenance are not adversaries but rather two fundamental pillars of an efficient industrial system. If management recognizes this and supports improved cooperation, both productivity and long-term equipment reliability will benefit.

Best regards, LBMM Team


Location: Miskolc, Magyarország

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