Day in the Life of a Proactive Maintenance Technician

 Day in the Life of a Proactive Maintenance Technician

 

What is a Proactive Maintenance Technician?  

A Proactive Maintenance Technician is a highly-trained professional expert in his skills area who has knowledge of other skills areas, including safety and production, and a desire to learn more. He knows and can implement a Failure Modes Driven Maintenance Strategy for any piece of equipment. A Proactive Maintenance Technician uses his knowledge and experience to ensure the maintenance process is optimized by making constructive recommendations to management concerning improvement areas. 

To ensure success, a Proactive Maintenance Technician is proactive in everything he does. He constantly reviews information to ensure procedures are accurate and issues are resolved quickly and does what is required to ensure the work is repeatable. He leads by example and takes responsibility for training new employees as to how to be a proactive and effective Maintenance Technician.

A successful Proactive Maintenance Technician follows known Best Repair Practices in all of his tasks and has a suitable reference book as part of his tool set, such as Industrial Machinery Repair: Best Maintenance Practices Pocket Guide from MRO-Zone. He is certified as a Lubrication Specialist and knows and follows Best Lubrication Practices.

On a daily basis, a Proactive Maintenance Technician begins work on time, ends work on time, takes the allotted break(s) without taking additional time, and always makes the best use of his time. He knows his planned and scheduled work for the week and inspects the next day’s tools and parts for the scheduled work. His wrench time is high (55% plus) because he identifies scheduling delays and makes recommendations for improvement. 

Additionally, a Proactive Maintenance Technician makes sure the work site is clean and safe when completing work. Work Safety is always a priority.Perhaps most importantly, a Proactive Maintenance Technician is always proud of the work he conducts or influences. No pat on the back is required, just the personal satisfaction in knowing that the job was completed successfully.

What does a typical Proactive Maintenance Technician’s day look like?  

A Proactive Maintenance Technician begins the day by pulling a job package from the scheduled work box, goes to where the parts are kitted, pulls the required parts and tools, and leaves for the job site. Because the Planner has made sure that all special tools, parts, and procedures are at the job location, the Maintenance Technician can begin on time as all of the equipment, parts, tools, and procedures are ready to execute.

 

The Maintenance Technician arrives at the job site and is greeted by production, who has cleaned and cooled down the equipment per the maintenance schedule so that the Maintenance Technician has the optimum amount of time to perform preventive maintenance, corrective maintenance, etc.

At this time, the Maintenance Technician performs his work to specification and following all procedures, cleans the area, and releases the equipment back to production in a “like new” status, following the definition of maintenance: "To Maintain", "Keep, Preserve, Protect"  Once production operates the equipment to standard, the Maintenance Technician:

 

closes out the work order with the proper failure codes, failure causes, time taken to complete the job, and any other information required in summary. Before Shift ends and prior to leaving for the day, the Maintenance Technician reviews the work scheduled for the next day from the job plan package that the Planner/Scheduler has left to ensure that he knows the job and validate that the parts are in the kitted area. 

 

He also participates in a Tool Box Training session concerning safety, new work instructions, or technical training ideas to increase his knowledge base and help teammates by sharing his knowledge on a weekly basic (30 minutes max). What value does a Proactive Maintenance Technician provide to a Proactive Organization?

As previously discussed, a Proactive Maintenance Technician is always:  

on time, performs work to standard, makes recommendations to improve work the next time it is to be executed, ensures tools are operational, verifies that production has started up the equipment to standard and on time, and performs all work in a safe environment. In addition to all of this, a Proactive Maintenance Technician adds value by working with production and operations as a team to resolve equipment problems, whether they are maintenance or production-related, thus optimizing asset reliability and increasing capacity.

The effect of a Proactive Maintenance Technician’s ability to conduct Preventive Maintenance as a “Controlled Experiment” is evident. Because the Proactive Maintenance Technician always takes the time to make the repairs accurately, they are more often than not sustainable with no rework required. A Proactive Maintenance Technician is capable of correcting defects and making repairs using repeatable, effective procedures, which reduces rework, and has the ability to also write effective, repeatable procedures following company guidelines. This ensures that other Technicians have the tools to perform same quality work.

With a focus on safety, the Proactive Maintenance Technician ensures all work places are free of hazards and is skilled at using the tools required to reduce potential hazards. His training in the identification of failure modes and their causes for all equipment in his area and his in-depth knowledge of how to prevent or identify failures early is a key component of preventing a failure. Furthermore, the Proactive Maintenance Technician is trained and can execute specific advanced maintenance tools, such as ultrasound, infrared, and laser alignment tools, with precision when needed, reducing the need for additional personnel.

A Proactive Maintenance Technician is confident in providing to management metrics that prove asset reliability is improving. Further, he has the ability to make recommendations for equipment improvement based on failure reports and metrics.

Measuring the Effectiveness of a Proactive Maintenance Technician  

Maintenance Technician Balanced Scorecard  

Percent of Rework: 

< 2%  Schedule Compliance: 

> 95%  MTBF (area of responsibility) 

>Trending Upward  Safety/Environmental Incidents: 0  Energy Reduction – Green Contribution

 

If all of your Maintenance Technicians meet the above qualifications, then you can expect a reduction of 9-11% energy consumption based on numerous studies .  Ricky Smith, CMRP, CMRT (Certified Maintenance and Reliability Technician) with over 30 years’ experience in maintenance as a maintenance manager, maintenance supervisor, maintenance engineer, maintenance training specialist, and maintenance consultant and is a well-known published author.  If you have any questions, email me [email protected]

The Author: Ricky Smith CMRP, CMRT, CRL

 

About:  

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