May 9, 2025
Developing an effective strategy for maintenance operations
In today’s competitive industrial landscape, an efficient maintenance strategy is essential for ensuring operational efficiency, optimized lifecycle of assets, and optimized allocation of costs, just to name a few. To reach desired milestones and goals and to pursue high performance in production, maintenance should be seen as one of the key enablers in building a winning strategy. This article explores the key elements involved in designing and developing a competent maintenance strategy that also aligns with the vision of production operations.
Importance of maintenance strategy and roadmap
Designing and developing a clear strategy and roadmap for maintenance operations is essential to maintain high levels of productivity and minimize downtime. Aligning this strategy with the operational goals ensures that maintenance activities directly support the broader objectives of the organization. Overall strategy work for maintenance involves setting both annual and long-term objectives to provide clear direction and priorities, achieve agreed milestones, improve plant reliability and adopt the best suitable tools and technologies for each stage of the journey. Having a clear, up-to-date, and well-communicated strategy can be a valuable guide in navigating through different circumstances and meeting the expectations of all stakeholders down the road.
Key success factors for effective strategy development
For maintenance organizations, the focus is often on managing day-to-day activities and planning the next overhauls. While ensuring that all planned tasks are completed on time each day is essential, it’s equally important to allocate time and resources for strategic planning. Achieving success in implementing overall maintenance strategies involves focusing on the following factors:
Establishing a clear and agreed long-term vision: Establishing a shared vision with production and other relevant functions helps align efforts and resources with common goals, ensuring everyone is working towards the same objectives.
Strategic focus beyond daily activities: Successful organizations allocate time for long-term strategic planning, beyond just managing daily operations and problem-solving.
Prioritization of impactful activities: Prioritizing activities that have the biggest impact leads to faster progress and better results, supporting overall strategic goals.
Focused KPI measurements: Selecting Key Performance Indicators and supportive indicators that track progress and demonstrate process efficiency helps in making informed decisions. KPIs should align with the strategy and long-term roadmap.
Strong communication across all levels: Effective and clear communication throughout the organization is crucial for successful strategy implementation. This ensures unified and efficient efforts within the organization.
Identifying Need for Change: Early recognition of needs for change — whether in processes, technologies, or ways of working — helps reduce inertia and supports effective strategy implementation.
Balanced planning and execution: While planning is important, balancing it with execution is key. Organizations that successfully implement strategies ensure that plans are actionable and followed through.
Systematic follow-up process: Implementing a systematic follow-up process ensures that initiatives are continuously monitored and not sidelined by more urgent daily tasks.
Comprehensive audit/assessment system: Having internal and external audit systems in place to verify improvements enhances maintenance processes and accountability, leading to continuous improvement.
Adequate resources: Ensuring sufficient organizational resources, budget, and time supports the development and implementation of effective maintenance strategies.
By focusing on these success factors, organizations can achieve continuous improvement, find innovative solutions, and avoid a reactive approach. This leads to the achievement of long-term operational goals and milestones, additionally improving productivity, timely deliveries and reduced warehousing of finished goods due to reliable production equipment.
Quant’s approach
Quant provides a comprehensive approach for designing and developing effective strategies for maintenance organizations in tight collaboration with plant production operations. Strategy development at Quant sites is an essential part of the Contract Governance. This framework ensures that all elements, from workshops to implementation, are done coherently. Key elements of the strategy development approach include:
Annual strategy reviews: These reviews involve collaboration with production teams to set and update both short-term and long-term maintenance goals. This can include workshops or other events to facilitate the process.
Alignment with partnership goals: Ensuring that the maintenance strategy aligns with the overall goals and objectives of the partnership, fostering a collaborative and cohesive approach.
Quant site operation model: A complete balanced framework covering all maintenance processes, contributing to building a balanced overarching strategy.
Maintenance management master plan: A strategy implementation plan with concrete actionable steps, timelines, resources, and responsibilities.
Other supportive elements: Quant Operational Excellence team facilitation and support, quantNumbers operational reporting platform, utilization of best practices and results from Quant Site Assessments, change management skills and tools, annual customer satisfaction survey, effective meeting structures and more.
Steering committee follow-ups: Reviewing the statuses of action items and supporting development efforts.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the importance of designing and developing an effective maintenance strategy and roadmap cannot be overlooked in achieving sustainable results for both maintenance and production. By focusing on key success factors and adopting a structured approach, organizations can successfully plan, implement, and update their strategy. An effective maintenance strategy not only ensures daily productivity but also contributes to the long-term competitiveness of plant operations. If you are interested in learning more about how Quant can help your manufacturing operations with a strategic maintenance partnership, please don’t hesitate to contact us!
Partnership Fulfillment Process Owner
Antti Ketola
