The Benefits and Critical Success Factors of Autonomous Maintenance

First determine the reason of implementing a significant change in approach such as autonomous maintenance. How will it contribute to your business success? Outline how this way of working can benefit the organization and be another step in your Digital Transformation journey. When will implementing this be regarded a success? What are the KPIs?

Ensuring that the management team is on board is important. Not only because you ask a lot of time, effort and budget from the organization but also simply because it is a big change for everyone. In fact, make sure you have buy in upfront not only from management but from all levels and departments and especially from front-line operators. Emphasize what’s in it for them and have them become the owners of the project. Answer their questions: Is this work on top of their usual workload? Why should they change their day-to-day work? What will they get in return?

If Operations and Maintenance departments are responsible for different aspects of maintaining the assets, clear communications and guidelines are key. It is important to have procedures and standards in place so everyone works in the same way. A Connected Frontline Worker app can play a role as these platforms have the possibility of including before/after images of assets, checklists and for example instruction videos. The simpler the better as this will avoid uncertainty, interpretational differences and errors.

Operators need to learn new capabilities and expand their knowledge of the equipment. They have to dive into the maintenance perspective; How do the components of the assets work, technical specifications, safety protocols and much more. Be aware that your operators have different levels of knowledge and speed of learning. Set up training and coaching. If possible let it be a joint effort of Maintenance and Operations; field workers can also provide their knowledge and insights of equipment. Doing this will also help with promoting collaboration and sharing learnings and best practices later on.

All assets which are suitable and selected for autonomous maintenance should be labeled. You should also have all asset data available and connected to other systems. Don’t forget to carve out time, effort and budget for this. It is a challenging task that requires an investment from more than one or two different departments and disciplines. Obviously, you also have to provide the team with solutions and technology to be able to perform autonomous maintenance. Connected Frontline Worker (CFW) platforms are used by both maintenance and operations. A CFW app will enhance engagement of all involved teams  because they can more easily collaborate and contribute to a common goal and continuous improvement.