1. Failure to Create a Powerful Mandate for Change
     In our experience, the biggest barrier to change is simply that the organization is simply not ready for it. Accordingly, it is best to start any Maintenance change project with the assumption that the case for change has not yet been made. 
     A Case for Change is a reasoned, yet powerfully persuasive justification for the changes targeted by your change effort. To be effective, your case for change should be:
  • Brief 
  • Clear 
  • Well articulated 
  • Logical 
  • Qualitative and quantitative 
  • Well documented
  • Compelling 
Above all it must build a strong sense of urgency. 
     When we are involved in a Maintenance change project, we often find that employees' perceptions of what will change vary significantly. Very few perceive change in multiple levers of change. It is important, in communicating the case for change, to let them know the scope of the change that is expected. 
     Benchmarking is an extremely valuable, if not essential, tool in building the case for change. However, to support a sustainable case for change, it is no longer sufficient to collect a few, barely relevant productivity statistics. Balanced and complete benchmarking measures will consider the following factors:
  • Process/Performance Benchmarks - this is the traditional staple of all benchmarking exercises - the measured results (or metrics) achieved by competitors or world-class performers in various processes and the methods used to achieve those results. In a maintenance environment, these could include measures such as: equipment availability, equipment reliability, maintenance costs as a percentage of Estimated Plant Replacement Value, and so on. 
  • Strategic Benchmarks - The direction for a change initiative may involve changes in maintenance strategy. Where this is so, the benchmark should include information on the strategies adopted by competitors. These could include consideration of factors such as: the range of Maintenance services that are contracted out, the nature of these contracts (i.e. Partnering agreements, Performance-Based contracts etc.) 
  • Plant & Equipment Design Benchmarks - Factual, current information on the expectations and needs of operations, and how they match the capabilities of your plant and equipment is central to building a sustainable case for change. For example, a plant which is barely capable of keeping pace with production requirements, and in which any equipment failure will lead to immediate loss of sales revenue will require different Maintenance requirements (and Maintenance inputs) to a plant that has ample spare capacity. It is important to realize that the Maintenance requirements for plant and equipment is determined, in the short term, by the interaction between plant design and operational requirements. It is possible that some plants with lower Maintenance costs are able to achieve this through increased investment in redundant plant - the overall mix may be less than effective. 
  • Workforce Benchmarks - Building a sustainable case for change requires an honest assessment of the organization's readiness and capacity for change. While we would probably prefer to consider that our workforce are always ready for, and capable of, significant change, in many cases significant change is simply not possible within a short timeframe. For example, those organizations that operate within a highly structured and unionized environment may find it more difficult to achieve significantly different working practices than those that have fewer union constraints.
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