A major reason that maintenance techs tend not to be thrilled about entering data on preventive maintenance forms and repair reports is because they feel it’s a waste of their time. A common refrain is “Nobody’s going to read it.”
At one central Tennessee manufacturing plant, the new plant engineer noticed this problem. To solve it, he did a pilot project. Only certain techs performed preventive maintenance on motors, and from that same pool came the techs who responded to motor-related trouble calls or replaced motors.
He met with them and said if they’d commit to collecting complete and accurate PM data and repair report data for just one month, then he’d publish failure cause reports once the month was over.
The reports sliced and diced the data to include several colorful and informative charts. These were posted prominently not just in the maintenance shop but also in the cafeteria. The motor techs asked to go a full 90 days with the pilot project.
Other maintenance personnel started asking about reports for the equipment they worked on. They were made the same offer, and they accepted.
