How do you define maintenance excellence? This is a good question. It’s easy to come up with operational cost savings or equipment uptime improvement percentages. I believe, however, that the true measure and success of a maintenance department is best reflected by teamwork (or lack thereof) on the shop floor. 

The winners of the PEM 2006 Maintenance Awards are tremendous examples of maintenance teamwork. Canadian Tire and the City of Mississauga (pages 22-25) have maintenance teams that work together and take ownership to ensure the job is done right. They also use innovative reliability strategies.

Here’s what award winners Ken Desloges, P. Log, maintenance, ASRS/conveyor manager, Canadian Tire, and Shawn Crawford, the City of Mississauga’s manager of facilities maintenance, have to say about their respective maintenance teams:

Ken Desloges: “Maintenance must work as a team. With operations working a seven-day by 20-hour schedule, maintenance has a four-hour window to service equipment. Work must be well planned and properly scheduled, with the parts available and execution must occur without incident. This can only be achieved through teamwork.”

Shawn Crawford: “The team as a whole has come from an organization that just went ‘through the motions’ to one of being re-energized and committed to the goal of being the best. We found ourselves going down new paths, while having to adapt to changing processes. Everyone demonstrated their abilities and I’m extremely proud of my staff.”

Everyone gets out of life what he or she puts in. My job editing PEM is the same—so is yours as a maintenance professional. It also doesn’t matter whether you’re a maintenance manager or tradesperson. Henry Ford once had this to say about teamwork: “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” Ensure that maintenance teamwork takes priority. I guarantee your efforts will be rewarded. Why, you might be a winner of the PEM 2007 Maintenance Awards!

Robert Robertson, Editor
PEMAC Allied Member
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