2021 Outlook: Stories from the Maintenance Community

The Maintenance Community's Resilience is the Highlight of 2020 

It might be an understatement to say that 2020 was an unprecedented year.

At the beginning of the pandemic, many of us knew that things are going to change – that was a certainty. The question I had back in July of 2020 was, how can we anticipate and prepare for the changes to come in the world of maintenance and reliability? From that question, I spurred my list of the top 7 ways I see maintenance changing in a post-COVID 19 world. To recap:

1. We will need to rethink supply chains.
2. There is going to be a dramatic increase in remote work.
3. There is going to be a higher need for digital documentation.
4. Earning trust with these new working conditions will take time.
5. There will be an introduction of new technologies.
6. There will be an increased demands for maintenance, fasciitis, and sanitation workers
7. There will be a change in buying behavior. 

Now that it’s 2021, I wanted to take a step back. To be honest, what stood out to me the most last year, wasn’t all these transformations in work and new trends to analyze (although they have been astonishing). What stood out to me most was how resilient the maintenance and reliability community has been and how we’ve risen to the challenge. 

So now it's the new year, and I wanted to take some time to share what I’ve been hearing in the maintenance community, and share my thoughts on what the state of maintenance will look like in 2021. Instead of talking about trends that were running in my mind, I wanted to echo the perspective of the professionals who are in the front lines each and every day. 

“What are some of the most challenging shifts and moments in your career, and how did they transform the way you perform work and perceive the current state of maintenance today?”

I posed this question to the maintenance community earlier this year, and these were some of the responses people shared. 

Andy Gailey, Founding Director at UPTIME Consultant Ltd., said,

I started my journey in the predictive field in 2006, after a couple of years of route based data collection, on 12 hour shifts in a 24/7 environment (I was a practitioner for 9 yrs!) I used to dream about automating the mundane process and scaling my asset reach .Roll forward 15 years and I’m working with leaders in the field of automating and scaling predictive just like I envisioned. This I believe was due to smartphones, cloud technology and data transfer, all driven by humans of course! I’m glad we’ve come this far, the future will be interesting. One thing I just thought of that most probably formed my outlook was Star Trek, as a kid I would marvel at their communications devices every week on TV.

I love the feeling of endless possibility that comes from this outlook from Andy. Amidst the pandemic, it’s been easy to be bogged down or tunneled on short term patches, especially because so much drastic change was happening in such a short time. Sometimes it takes a perspective from someone with the breadth of experience like Andy to snap back and look forward to a future where our present dreams will become a reality. 

Shadrach Stephens, the Global Improvement Leader and Reliability Director at DOW, said,

The most challenging shift that I’ve witnessed which has made some progress since the pandemic is the thought around a “One Team” concept where operations, maintenance, reliability, and engineering work together to implement new technologies and drive value. From my vantage point, the last 10-15 years has been a slow journey to achieve this mindset but as organizations are challenged even more to do more with less, we have focused on comprehensive team development and alignment. I think the pandemic enabled us to accelerate our progression mainly because we’ve had to rely on each other (all manufacturing functions) to stay competitive, safe, healthy, and reliable. The improvements around team dynamics has enabled the adoption of new technologies (operations needing more real time M&R data to make business decisions and engineering supporting projects to implement). There’s still more work to be done but I have definitely seen a shift from when I first started in industry.

I couldn’t agree more with this sentiment and view by Shadrach. One thing I’ve also noticed in my day-to-day work is how much more of an emphasis there is on teamwork and alignment. Every team member and every department contributes to a larger goal for the entire company to thrive and stay relevant. The pandemic has taught everyone to rely more on each other in dire times. In some ways, living in truly difficult times has reminded us how important it is to come and work together. Collaboration is one of the fundamentals to human success. 

Tamara Quinata-Tinkler, freelance SaaS Consultant, said,

Some of the largest shifts in maintenance occurs when introducing technology to document work when previously there was either "paper only" documentation or no documentation. The shift allowed my team to learn a new set of skills they would have otherwise not aquired. Additionally, being able to schedule preventive maintenance helped to structure our weekly assignments and allowed us a snapshot of where money and time were being allocated. It was a huge leap but the benefits were tremendous. I think the most difficult transition was to overcome the technical deficiencies within the team. One on one training helped in that endeavor.

Since I work directly in SaaS, I might have a bit of biased perspective here toward Tamara’s statement. However, I will say that digital transformation in maintenance and reliability is a trend I’ve noticed COVID has accelerated immensely and is looking to stay. What’s even better to see is that teams like Tamara’s are learning to make the most of all the technology that’s being adopted by teams during this pandemic.

What these Experiences could tell us About the Future State of Maintenance in 2021

Of course, I only took a couple of anecdotal snippets from the maintenance community and echoed them here. From these alone, we wouldn’t be able to draw any conclusive predictions on what the future of maintenance holds for us in 2021.

However, these stories and shared experiences are important for us to hear. They are affirmations of the trends, shifts, and changes we’ve all been feeling throughout the pandemic. They capture the perception of those working in the front lines each and every day to maintain our world amidst a global crisis. 

What I’m hearing is that, yes, we are in a period of rapid digital transformation in the maintenance and reliability space and that these are changes that everyone must learn to acclimate to. But what I’m also hearing, through these shared experiences, is how we are accomplishing this feat. 

What Andy shared was perseverance, in which he saw hours of mundane tasks be automated, enabled by smartphones, cloud technology and data transfer, driven by humans.

What Shadrach shared was unity, in which he saw collaboration and coming together in order for his team and company to stay competitive, safe, healthy, and reliable amidst a global pandemic.

What Tamara shared was openness, in which she saw her team take leaps to learn new technology and adopt with an open mind which allowed their team to evolve and do more than they had previously known they could. 

So while I am a firm believer in analyzing trends, statistics, and data, it’s important to take a step back and listen to the community and the lessons we have to share with each other through our experiences. Along the way we may discover the how to the solutions we seek. Through the process, we can turn data into insight and drive insights into action, and together we will shape the future state of maintenance in 2021. 

(If you're interested in quantitative data, our team here at UpKeep is releasing the results of our 2020 State of Maintenance Survey the first week of February so be on the lookout! Alternatively, you could read about my thoughts on, "How COVID has Accelerated Digital Transformation in US Manufacturing")