Quantify and Simplify

As maintainers, we know there is a lot of value in what we do. Without our work, plant, and equipment will soon stop and our companies will then go out of business. What we do impacts safety, health, revenues, costs, and company reputation. A dirty little truth about maintenance is that it is only we who work in it, that really know the value of what we do – or do we? We do know our value in qualitative terms, but can we quantify it? Most maintenance can be improved and we know it. We can do things more efficiently, and we can keep things running more reliably. We often know how to do that, but when we want to make those improvements there is no money for them. Why? Most business people know very little about what we do and how it impacts their business. They see maintenance as a repair shop. We fix what breaks. And they know little, or nothing, more. They may know that maintenance represents a significant cost, and they may even know that they can’t get away with cutting it too much. But they do not know the full value of what maintenance can deliver, nor what it takes to deliver it. If you want to make improvements you need a decision-maker, someone with executive-level authority, to back you up. To get that, you will need to explain what value you can deliver, and in terms they can understand. You will need to show them the savings that are possible from doing things more efficiently, and the added revenues that can arise from investment in defining the right work. You will also need to show them how their support is needed to bring operators and the supply chain into the team with you to make those changes happen so that benefits are fully realized. Quantifying value and being simple in how you say it matters.