DILO Maintenance Technician

A proactive maintenance technician is a highly trained professional who is an expert in his or her skills area, has knowledge of other skills areas, including safety and production, and has a desire to learn more. This professional knows and can implement a failure-modes driven maintenance strategy for any piece of equipment.

A proactive maintenance technician uses knowledge and experience to ensure the maintenance process is optimized by making constructive recommendations to management concerning improvement areas.

To ensure success, a proactive maintenance technician is proactive in everything he or she does. This person constantly reviews information to ensure procedures are accurate and issues are resolved quickly and does what is required to ensure the work is repeatable. Such a professional leads by example and takes responsibility for training new employees on how to be proactive and effective maintenance technicians.

A successful proactive maintenance technician follows known best repair practices in all tasks and has a suitable reference book as part of his or her tool set, such as Industrial Machinery Repair: Best Maintenance Practices Pocket Guide from Elsevier Publishing. A proactive maintenance technician may be a Certified Maintenance Reliability Technician (CMRT).

On a daily basis, a proactive maintenance technician begins work on time, ends work on time, takes the allotted break(s) without taking additional time and always makes the best use of time. He or she knows the applicable planned and scheduled work for the week and inspects the next day’s tools and parts for the scheduled work.

Wrench time is high (55% and greater), as shown in the following diagram, because the maintenance technician identifies scheduling delays and makes recommendations for improvement.

Additionally, a proactive maintenance technician makes sure the work site is clean and safe when completing work. Work safety is always the #1 priority. We hear this all the time, but the facts show a proactive organization's safety and incident rate is extremely low. Think about the different in a proactive maintenance organization vs. a reactive one, a proactive maintenance organization incident/safety rate is low.

What does a Typical Day in the Life of a Proactive Maintenance Technician Looks Like?

A proactive maintenance technician begins the day by pulling a job package from the scheduled work order, goes to where the parts are kitted, pulls the required parts and tools, and leaves for the job site. Because the planner has made sure that all special tools, parts and procedures are at the job location, the maintenance technician can begin on time since all the equipment, parts, tools and procedures are ready to execute.

The maintenance technician arrives at the job site and is greeted by a production worker, who has cleaned and cooled down the equipment per the maintenance schedule, so the maintenance technician has the optimum amount of time to perform preventive maintenance, corrective maintenance, etc.

With a focus on safety, the proactive maintenance technician ensures all workplaces are free of hazards and is skilled at using the tools required to reduce potential hazards to include premature equipment failure.

In-depth training in the identification of failure modes and their causes for all equipment in the maintenance technician’s area and vast knowledge on how to prevent or identify failures early are key components for preventing a failure.

Furthermore, the proactive maintenance technician is trained and can execute specific advanced maintenance tools, such as ultrasound, infrared, and laser alignment tools, with precision when needed, thus reducing the need for additional personnel.

The proactive maintenance technician performs all maintenance work to specifications.

Following all procedures, the maintenance technician cleans the area and releases the equipment back to production in a “fully functional” status according to the definition of maintenance.

Once production has the equipment back to operating standards, the maintenance technician returns to the shop and ensures all required closed out information is on the work order with the proper failure codes, failure causes, time taken to complete the job and any other information required in the synopsis to includes any recommendation to changes to the work order.

Before the Shift Ends

Prior to leaving for the day, the maintenance technician reviews the work scheduled for the next day from the job plan package left by the planner/scheduler. This ensures that the proactive maintenance technician knows the job and validates that the parts are in the kitted area.

Additional Comments

The maintenance technician may also participate in a Tool-Box training session concerning safety, new work instructions, or technical training ideas to increase his or her knowledge base and help teammates by sharing this knowledge. See the example Tool-Box Talks in the following examples.

What Value Does a Proactive Maintenance Technician Provide to a Proactive Organization?

In addition to all of this, a proactive maintenance technician adds value by working with production and operations as a team to resolve equipment problems, whether maintenance or production related, to optimize asset reliability and increase capacity.

A proactive maintenance technician is always on time, performs work to standard, makes recommendations to improve work for the next time it is executed, ensures tools are operational, verifies production has started up the equipment to standard and on time, and performs all work in a safe environment.

A proactive maintenance technician’s conducts preventive maintenance as a “controlled experiment.” Because the proactive maintenance technician always takes the time to make repairs accurately, they are more often than not sustainable with no rework required.

A proactive maintenance technician is also capable of correcting defects and making repairs using repeatable, effective procedures that reduce rework. A maintenance technician also has the ability to write effective, repeatable procedures following company guidelines to ensure other technicians have the tools to perform quality work.

With a focus on safety, the proactive maintenance technician ensures all workplaces are free of hazards and is skilled at using the tools required to reduce potential hazards. In-depth training in the identification of failure modes and their causes for all equipment in the maintenance technician’s area and vast knowledge on how to prevent or identify failures early are key components for preventing a failure.

Furthermore, the proactive maintenance technician is trained and can execute specific advanced maintenance tools, such as ultrasound, infrared and laser alignment tools, with precision when needed, thus reducing the need for additional personnel.

A proactive maintenance technician is confident in providing management with metrics that show asset reliability is improving. Further, he or she has the ability to make recommendations for equipment improvement based on failure reports and metrics as shown below.

Ricky Smith wrote this article based on his experience as a former Maintenance Technician at the US Army, Exxon, and Alumax Mt Holly (Alcoa Mt Holly).

Like to advance your knowledge and skills as a Proactive Maintenance Technician join me for this upcoming workshop. "Best Maintenance Technician Best Practices (Virtual via Zoom) "May 22-26, 2023" -- 12:00noon to 5:00pm ET (5 hours a day for 5 Days)

For more information email me at [email protected]