Page 341 - Intro Predictive Maintenance

332 An Introduction to Predictive Maintenance

address all five levels of approval. Benefits must address the unique concerns of each
of these five groups.

Corporate Management. Corporate management must make the first commitment.
Most improvement programs are expensive and will require corporate-level approval.
Therefore, your initial justification package must be prepared for this critical
audience.

A successful justification package must be couched in terms that these individuals
will understand and accept. Remember that corporate managers are driven by one
and only one thing—the bottom line. Your company’s president is evaluated by the
stockholders and board of directors based solely on the overall profitability of
the corporation. Your justification package must presents the means to improve
profitability.

Improvements in terms of staffing per unit produced, increased yields, and reduced
overall costs are the key phrases that must be used to gain approval. Corporate-level
executives are looking for ways to improve their perceived value. You must supply
these means as part of your plan.

Plant Management. To a lesser degree, plant executives are driven by the same stimuli
as those at corporate level. Although they tend to have a broader view of plant oper-
ations, plant-level managers want to see justification couched in terms of total plant.

One other factor is critical to success at this level. Most plant executives do not have
a maintenance background. In fact, most have a built-in prejudice against the main-
tenance organization. Many are convinced that maintenance is the root-cause of the
plant’s poor performance. If your justification package and program plan are defined
in maintenance terms or you limit improvements to traditional maintenance issues,
your chances for approval will be severely limited.

Division Management. Total, absolute support of division managers is crucial. In most
plants, the division manager controls all of the resources required to implement
change. Regardless of the organizational structure, this level of management has
control of the operating and maintenance budget as well as allocation of the work-
force. Without this support, your program cannot succeed. If you can gain this support,
you are well on your way to success.

Line Supervision. In many plants, first-line supervisors are the most resistant to
change. In some cases, this resistance is driven by insecurity. Generally, this segment
of the workforce is the first to be cut during reengineering or downsizing. As a result,
their natural tendency is to resist any new program that is touted as a plant improve-
ment program.

In other plants, supervisors have been conditioned by a long history of failed attempts
to correct plant problems. The myriad “programs of the month,” which have become