FUTURE OF MAINTENANCE
FEATURE
Outsourcing maintenance – is it time yet?
If we ask finance and operational leaders what they think about outsourcing of maintenance, they will admit to being uninformed, therefore unable to give a fact-based answer. If we ask them about their desire for improved asset performance and lower costs, they are interested, but cautious about just how it can be achieved. Finance and operational leaders are aware of problems with maintenance are not going away. The availability of skilled workers is a massive problem globally. The loss of experience, as baby boomers have/are retiring, has resulted in a lot of guesswork and re-learning of old lessons. It has also left the workforce with less experienced middle management, who learned management from that older cohort. Those old school management techniques are not working well with the younger workforce, and the work ethic is different. Management techniques and provisions to accommodate it, have not adapted particularly well. Maintainers are often unhappy that they are treated as low value expense items and unworthy of investment. They are unhappy with inexperienced leadership that doesn’t listen. They do feel a sense of ownership, but seldom get the feeling that everyone who manages them shares that feeling. They want to see things improve but lack confidence in their management ability to affect it. If we ask maintainers and their leaders if they want to be outsourced, the answer is invariably no. Outsourcing has negative connotations that are not necessarily valid. For one, there is a perception that it isn’t core, meaning the function being outsourced is not 24 MRO / Winter 2023
important to the business. Core business functions are those that generate revenues, and in that sense, maintenance isn’t. Maintenance is neither core to most businesses, nor is it truly unique, with relatively few specialty activities that might be unique to the business (e.g. industry or asset specific skills and knowledge). Another connotation is it will result in lower pay, worse working conditions and it could result in the loss of employment.While this has happened when other functions such as IT, HR, accounting and marketing have been outsourced, that does not set a precedent for maintenance. Firstly, it is important to understand that outsourcing is not the same as contracting out.With outsourcing, the service provider becomes a business partner with the owner. A well-constructed outsourcing agreement will lower costs through efficiencies, but it will also result in enhanced revenues through improved asset performance. Both the asset owner and the service provider can benefit if the owner’s revenues improve because of performance improvements. To achieve that, it is imperative that the workforce be motivated to perform.That is not achieved through reductions in pay, working conditions, job losses, or any other disincentives. Unlike IT, HR and accounting, skilled maintainers are not available in big numbers at relatively low cost. They
are valuable, difficult to find and difficult to retain. While the maintainers an owner already has would be valuable, it is fair to say that they may also require additional training, particularly in processes (such as work management) that would change. They may require skills upgrading to use technologies that they were not using before, and to enable them to participate in determining what are the best maintenance tactics to be used in the systems with which they are already familiar. One thing a smart service provider would want to do, is to capture the lessons learned and use them. The sense of ownership over problems and performance could be enhanced as that would become the focus of the outsource service provider. A lot of the concerns about the current state can be addressed and indeed removed in an organization that made reliability and maintenance its business. If outsourcing were used, the service provider would need to have MROMAGAZINE.COM
Photo: visoot / Adobe Stock
BY JAMES REYES-PICKNELL
