By
Cary Grant
What’s eating away at equipment performance in your facility? It’s not always the big breakdowns. Often, it’s the slow creep of inefficiencies. Missed maintenance, poor tracking, miscommunication, or just not having the right data at the right time. As a maintenance manager, you’re already juggling a lot, and trying to stay on top of everything manually just isn’t sustainable.
If you’re aiming for maximum uptime and smoother workflows, there are practical changes you can make right now that will shift the needle in a real way.
1. Start with a CMMS
If you’re still relying on spreadsheets or paper logs to track maintenance tasks, stop. The first and most impactful shift you can make is moving to a Computerized Maintenance Management System.
Why? Because of how a CMMS improves equipment efficiency. It gives you visibility across all assets, schedules, and maintenance history in one place. No more guesswork, no more hunting down old records; everything is centralized and easy to access.
A CMMS:
● Tracks preventive maintenance schedules so nothing gets missed
● Logs repair history for smarter long-term planning
● Assigns work orders to the right people instantly
● Reduces equipment downtime by getting ahead of issues
Once you start using it, you’ll wonder how you ever ran maintenance without it. The clarity alone is a game-changer.
2. Shift to Preventive (Not Reactive) Maintenance
This one’s simple, but still gets overlooked. If most of your work orders are triggered by breakdowns, you’re constantly playing catch-up.
Preventive maintenance flips that around. It’s about planning ahead — cleaning, calibrating, tightening, inspecting — before something goes wrong. Sure, it takes some coordination upfront, but it pays off in uptime and cost savings.
And no, preventive maintenance doesn’t have to mean over-maintenance. When it’s scheduled based on real usage, age, or risk, it becomes smart and efficient. Plus, your team stops firefighting and starts operating with more structure.
3. Train for Autonomy on the Floor
Not every issue needs to go through your maintenance team. That sounds odd, but hear this out. Some basic tasks, such as cleaning filters, checking levels, and spotting early warning signs, can be handled directly by operators if they’re trained properly. That’s not a threat to your team. It’s a boost to your entire operation.
When operators know how to keep their equipment in check, small issues get caught early. The line doesn’t slow down. Your team doesn’t get flooded with low-priority requests. Everyone wins. This isn’t about offloading. It’s about empowering, and it helps build a maintenance-aware culture across the plant.
4. Standardize the Inspection Process
Have you ever had one tech do a check and flag nothing, while another spots three issues? That’s the problem with loose inspection methods.
If you want consistent results, inspections need to be standardized. Create clear checklists, use the same format across shifts, and define what “acceptable” looks like for key indicators.
Standardization doesn’t have to be rigid. It just needs to be consistent. That way, you’re comparing apples to apples when reviewing inspection logs or making decisions about equipment health.
It also helps new hires ramp up faster, because they’re not guessing what to look for. They’ve got a clear playbook to follow.
5. Build a Strong Spare Parts Strategy
Downtime while waiting on a part is downtime you could have avoided. Take a look at how your spare parts are organized. Are you ordering too much of the wrong things and not enough of what you actually use? Is your inventory up to date? Is it easy to find what you need in an emergency?
Most facilities either overstock or understock. Neither is good.
Here’s how to fix it:
● Review usage trends – Know what gets used often
● Label clearly – No digging through bins
● Track in your CMMS – Inventory should be live and accurate
● Set reorder points – Don’t wait until you’re completely out
This one area can have a huge impact on your team’s ability to respond quickly when things go sideways.
6. Cut the Clutter in Work Orders
Work orders shouldn’t read like puzzles. If the instructions are vague or incomplete, techs waste time figuring out what to do or asking for clarification.
Write work orders like you expect someone else to do the task, without needing to call you.
That means:
● Clear task descriptions
● Accurate location info
● Tools and parts required
● Step-by-step instructions if needed
● Photos, diagrams, or anything that saves time
Yes, it takes a bit more time upfront. But on the back end, it streamlines everything.
7. Use Real Data, Not Just Gut Feel
Experience matters. But when it comes to making maintenance decisions, data needs to be the driver. Track mean time between failures (MTBF), mean time to repair (MTTR), and actual downtime per asset. Compare this against maintenance hours spent and cost per repair.
These numbers tell you where to focus your efforts and which machines are quietly eating into your margins. They also help justify budgets, staffing, and asset replacement, all backed by facts.
Your CMMS should be able to generate this data for you. Use it regularly. It’s more than just a report, it’s a strategy tool.
8. Improve Communication Between Teams
This one’s simple, but it changes everything. Maintenance doesn’t happen in a vacuum. If production doesn’t understand your constraints or if your team isn’t looped in on schedule changes, efficiency takes a hit.
Regular cross-team meetings help, but even more effective is integrating maintenance updates into the daily workflow. Whether that’s digital logs, shared calendars, or even a whiteboard at shift change, the key is visibility.
The goal isn’t to overload anyone with info. It’s to keep the right people aware of what’s happening, so surprises are reduced and planning becomes easier.
9. Audit One Machine a Month
Not everything has to be a full-blown audit. Focus on just one asset per month. Review its performance, maintenance history, parts usage, and any recurring issues.
You’ll start spotting patterns you can act on. Maybe a vendor change is needed. Maybe your maintenance schedule is too frequent or not frequent enough. These micro-audits help catch inefficiencies early and spread the workload evenly.
Also, it gives your team a manageable way to engage in continuous improvement, without adding a massive project to their plate.
Don’t Let Efficiency Slip Away
You don’t need a full overhaul to improve equipment efficiency. Small, intentional changes stack up fast. Whether it’s moving to a CMMS, cleaning up your work order process, or putting better spare parts tracking in place, each move helps your team run tighter and your machines run longer.