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FEATURE: Shifting maintenance engineering from ‘firefighting’ to innovation

Richard Young

Maintenance engineers are problem solvers, whose ingenuity and planning are critical to performance, productivity and profitability (Credit: Shutterstock)
Maintenance engineers are problem solvers, whose ingenuity and planning are critical to performance, productivity and profitability (Credit: Shutterstock)

It might not be the most attention-grabbing engineering field, but maintenance is mission-critical in most organisations. New research by the IMechE and RS tells us it is time to recognise its importance – and address its many challenges.

The Industry in Motion report surveyed almost 1,200 members, focusing on 700 in the UK and Ireland to create a snapshot of maintenance engineering in 2023.

Maintenance engineers are problem solvers, whose ingenuity and planning are critical to performance, productivity and profitability. But what are their key challenges? And where are the opportunities to innovate?

Asked about their key challenges for the next year, respondents had two main concerns – inflation and higher costs, and attracting and retaining talent, which were both selected by almost half (47%). Supply chain disruption was another worry, selected by 40%, while investment (30%), declining department resource (30%) and energy management (25%) were also concerns.

The big challenges for the profession, then, are to work through short term issues, particularly inflation and energy management; address medium term and slow burn problems, notably talent and resources; and consider deeper risks, in the shape of supply chain disruption (and, increasingly, IT-related threats).

State of play

The report, launched at the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel in London last Thursday (18 May), broke down the survey’s conclusions into five key areas. The first focus for the IMechE and London-headquartered product and service provider RS was the ‘state of play’ for maintenance engineering.

Organisational maturity on maintenance was found to be patchy, with many engineers reporting a limited appreciation of the cost of downtime and the opportunities to reduce it. Only 15% claimed a high level of maintenance maturity.

Changing this would not require a massive investment, according to the panel at the report’s launch. “In the first instance, you have to work with what you’ve got,” said Gary Harvey, head of field services at RS. “But there are usually opportunities to optimise your approach to maintenance. Even an old fashioned plant can benefit hugely from better maintenance planning and coordination.”

Best-in-class performers are addressing other issues raised in the report through better application of technology. More sophisticated real-time monitoring and predictive analysis are reducing downtime, while high confidence in data and engagement in cyber-security, including willingness to deploy cloud solutions, are aiding performance. High-tech environments are also easier to recruit into.

Widening the talent pipeline

Perhaps the most significant ‘snapshot’ finding for the profession was that maintenance engineering is demographically skewed. Workers in the field are generally older, while the gender imbalance is startling – 92% of respondents to the survey were men.

RS has been conducting outreach at schools to encourage girls into engineering, and the IMechE has also prioritised more female engagement with STEM subjects.

The problem goes beyond a lack of female role models, however, according to RS sales director Simon Fletcher: “We need to be deliberate about the details if we’re to get more equity in the profession – like PPE that’s properly designed for women.”

Solving the gender bias would help address the wider skills shortage, which remains acute. Organisations need to keep a close eye on the progress of apprentices, too, where a much higher proportion elect to focus their career on environmental sciences rather than mechanical engineering. And industry must engage more deeply with education to help engineers hit the ground running, with realistic ideas and expectations about their roles.

One impact of a talent shortage is greater use of outsourcing to plug the gaps. 57% of respondents cited highly-specialised skills as the reason for bringing in external contractors, but 40% said it was lack of in-house capabilities.

There is some good news. The proportion of 25 to 34-year-olds is up about 10% (two percentage points) in a decade, to just over 25%. By highlighting the ways in which engineering can make the world a better place, the sector could hire even more young people.

More than half the profession is now millennial (born 1980 to 1994), a ‘digital native’ cohort that could drive digital transformation. “They’ve grown up with different technologies,” said Lydia Amarquaye, professional development and education policy adviser at IMechE. “They want to use some of these to make life more efficient.”

‘Little sign of a tech revolution’

At the moment, however, there is little sign of a tech revolution. Only 18% of respondents said their company is planning a digital transformation of maintenance assets and facilities; by far the most common technology used to monitor or manage maintenance, cited by more than half of respondents (51%), is Excel spreadsheets. Most organisations do use some kind of computerised maintenance management system (CMMS) or enterprise asset management (EAM) to keep track of maintenance needs, however.

Too few companies are looking to exploit wireless and cloud-based management of sensor data, even with the emergence of increasingly capable ‘portal solutions’ to monitor output and analysis.

“Until recently, continuous readings and real-time analytics were complex and costly,” said Harvey. “But it’s become so much cheaper – and younger engineers are coming into the field expecting those kinds of capabilities.”

The big challenge is that the benefits scale with adoption. Point solutions, which only solve a single problem, can prove extremely effective, particularly in mission-critical systems or high maintenance devices. But the biggest gains come from enterprise-wide solutions – which are a much tougher challenge, not least for organisations new to whole-plant wireless coverage, cloud data management, analytics and (increasingly) the associated cyber-security implications.

“It’s a bit of a cliché, but when you go to a UK plant, the engineers will beam with pride about a machine that’s been in continuous service for decades,” said Harvey. “In Germany, their enthusiasm is for modern monitoring systems that optimise performance.”

The panel gave an important tip, however: don’t oversell technology. Call it a ‘revolution’ and people are put off. ‘Evolving the approach to data’ can be a more compelling project.

The true cost of breakdowns

With the survey revealing average hourly cost of plant downtime at £5,121 – and average unscheduled maintenance at 19.6 hours per week – that drive for new approaches would be welcomed in most organisations. Harvey’s anecdotal evidence was borne out in the survey, too: the biggest single driver of unscheduled downtime is ageing assets, cited by 28%.

“The costs of unplanned maintenance is significant,” said Emma Botfield, UK & Ireland MD for RS Group. “The impact is considerable regardless of size.”

When organisations under-invest in planned maintenance – including redundancy in equipment or processes – downtime can ripple through the supply chain, and the financial and reputational damage can be even more acute for smaller manufacturers.

That highlights another key finding: the value of data. Just making accurate assessment of downtime costs, or properly categorising maintenance incidents as operational wear-and-tear or operator induced failures, is essential if organisations are to properly resource their maintenance capabilities, the panel said.

Stakeholder collaboration

The report positions maintenance engineers as a stoic group, willing to soldier on through challenges with little complaint. Sharing challenges with the wider stakeholder group – both inside and outside their organisations – could reap dividends.

Getting accurate maintenance data is a prerequisite for securing the benefits of better collaboration. Richard Jeffers, MD of RS Industria, pointed out that operator induced failures – feeding damp card into a packing machine, for instance – is often miscounted as a maintenance incident, when what is required is better training on the line. The result is skewed KPIs and inaccurate reporting to internal stakeholders – in 64% of cases, that is operations, which ought to be leading on addressing those deficiencies.

Cross-organisational engagement – bringing in health and safety, ops, IT, procurement, HR and finance – changes the picture, allowing for a more granular focus on the causes of downtime, and a more sophisticated approach to investment to prevent it.

Externally, supplier collaboration is no less important. It is not just about working with them to manage spares and support – best-in-class maintenance operations work closely with them on strategic questions, drawing on their expertise.

The best organisations understand what problems they are trying to solve, what KPIs will demonstrate they are being addressed, why their data is fit for purpose, and how they plan to continue improving. Knowing the answers to these questions not only solves supplier collaboration and wins over internal stakeholders – it shifts the emphasis in maintenance engineering from firefighting to innovation. And that, in turn, is a much more attractive prospect for potential new recruits.

Download the Industry in Motion report by visiting the RS website


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Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

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