How Do You Market Repairs?
The maintenance department is a business within a business, which means it has internal customers. Unfortunately, the maintenance department can be a juicy target for budget cuts, since people tend to see it as a cost rather than a provider of revenue.
For example, if important production equipment goes down, then that window of downtime might be mentally associated with maintenance and blamed on repair techs, because the equipment isn’t up and running.
Even if the downtime cause is due to bad material or operator error, the perception could be “we’re down while waiting for maintenance to fix the problem.”
How can you position the importance of maintenance in the minds of internal customers as an uptime recovery resource? Here are three tips:
- Refer to a repair as an “uptime recovery operation,” not “downtime.”
- Instead of discussing how long the repair techs took to get the equipment running, talk about how quickly they recovered the uptime.
- If extended downtime was needed to affect a quality repair, don’t say “extra downtime.” Rather, say “run time extension.”
About the Author
Mark LamendolaMark Lamendola
Mark is an expert in maintenance management, having racked up an impressive track record during his time working in the field. He also has extensive knowledge of, and practical expertise with, the National Electrical Code (NEC). Through his consulting business, he provides articles and training materials on electrical topics, specializing in making difficult subjects easy to understand and focusing on the practical aspects of electrical work.
Prior to starting his own business, Mark served as the Technical Editor on EC&M for six years, worked three years in nuclear maintenance, six years as a contract project engineer/project manager, three years as a systems engineer, and three years in plant maintenance management.
Mark earned an AAS degree from Rock Valley College, a BSEET from Columbia Pacific University, and an MBA from Lake Erie College. He’s also completed several related certifications over the years and even was formerly licensed as a Master Electrician. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and past Chairman of the Kansas City Chapters of both the IEEE and the IEEE Computer Society. Mark also served as the program director for, a board member of, and webmaster of, the Midwest Chapter of the 7x24 Exchange. He has also held memberships with the following organizations: NETA, NFPA, International Association of Webmasters, and Institute of Certified Professional Managers.
