Mastering the fundamentals of facilities maintenance, an approach for greater reliability and lower associated costs

For more than twenty years, companies have outsourced a growing share of the maintenance of their industrial facilities. Often, collaboration between contractors and service providers is established as it arises and depending on opportunities of the moment.

In a context of crisis where companies must limit their investments, the maintenance of the facilities and, more broadly, the conservation of the industrial heritage take on a new importance.

As a matter of fact, the shortcomings of the service provider / prime contractor partnerships are paid a heavy price:

• maintenance employees are more exposed than others to the risk of an accident at work. Intervention on a large variety of installations or on running equipment can explain this observation,
• the contractors are gradually losing the "memory" of their own installations. The history of interventions, which a population of stable maintenance employees used to memorize, is lost. Efforts to create CMMS (Computer-aided Maintenance Management Systems) do not result in fully reliable databases,
• the productivity of maintenance as a whole stagnates. The multiplication of interfaces, the increase in the administrative tasks specific to outsourcing deteriorate the efficiency of service providers and contractors,
• the quality of maintenance interventions regresses. The decision of doing or outsourcing is governed by opportunistic rules and gradually impoverishes the client's skills. Ultimately, its ability to choose and evaluate its own providers disappears. 

This generic observation should lead the contractors to question their mastery of maintenance fundamentals: are they able to meet the legal and regulatory obligations they are asked to?

• Does maintenance allow them to guarantee the highest level of availability of their equipments?
• is the durability of their facilities guaranteed over time?
• Do their teams retain all the know-how necessary to continue their industrial activity?

• ....

Our interventions reduce maintenance costs up to 15% while ensuring a significant improvement in the reliability and longevity of the installations

Download the document (Fr) "Sous-traitance de maintenance"