When critical equipment goes down, you need an immediate response. That’s normally provided by the maintenance department. But the personnel needed to perform the repair must be pulled from some other task, and that’s typically the very maintenance work that prevents downtime.
If the maintenance department is sized correctly for the “normal failure rate” and has the correct test equipment and other resources, it can absorb this short-term deferment and catch up. But if it doesn’t catch up, that deferment time will grow. Consequently, so will the failure rate. Maintenance will then sink into fire-fighting mode with little, if any, real maintenance being done. Worse, the pressure to rush the repairs will mean even more downtime.
What’s the solution? Outsource specific maintenance and/or project work; this frees up your own people so they can erase the backlog. A bonus of this approach is a good maintenance services firm can often bring in fresh ideas for improving maintenance effectiveness.