I recently had a conversation with a client that I believe many of you can relate to. He shared his frustration about the lack of recognition his reliability team receives from the operations/production side of their organization. Despite their hard work ensuring everything runs smoothly, they often go unnoticed when things are going well. Yet, the moment there's a hiccup with the equipment, they're the first to be blamed.
This conversation got me thinking about the challenges many reliability teams face, not just in terms of their day-to-day responsibilities but also in how they're perceived within their organizations. It's a common scenario where the critical behind-the-scenes work gets overshadowed until a problem arises.
I'm curious to hear your thoughts and recommendations on how to work towards changing this culture within an established organization with limited leadership support.
How does your organization recognize the efforts of your reliability team? Have you found effective ways to improve communication and recognition between your team and other departments?
Let's share strategies and insights that could help elevate the status and appreciation of reliability teams across our community.
Looking forward to your replies and building a supportive discussion around this topic
Great topic here and one that is worthy of discussion. Having started my oil and gas career in operations I have seen these concerns first hand. Now in my plant leadership role, I think itâs imperative both maintenance and operations teams are highlighted for the unique value each group provides the business. Some of the simple, yet effective things we have implemented are as follows:
- Â A representative from the maintenance team is present during the daily or shift operations meeting. We provide the maintenance representative some time to update the operations team on what planned or unplanned maintenance activities are taking place in the plant / the operational areas. This not only supports communication, but also allows the operations team to hear what activities are being performed to ensure their equipment is operating as expected.Â
 - A representative from the operations team is present during the weekly maintenance meeting. This allows the operations representative to hear what work activities are taking place to gain a more meaningful understanding of the maintenance teamâs contributions to ensure the plant is functioning properly.Â
 - Another note to consider, is to get operations involved when maintenance is performing PMs or other maintenance activities. Get them involved by asking their opinion regarding troubleshooting, etc. Such as, âis this vibration noise normal to youâ or âwould you like this pump to operate and flow on the low, medium, or high end of range that I am authorized to set it to?â  Itâs getting both groups communicating and working together resulting in vesting interest with a higher likelihood to yield desired appreciation for the individual groups.Â
 - Not limited leadership here, but itâs important messaging is key during interactions with the whole team. As a plant manager, I ensure to describe the maintenance team in a manner that illustrates just how important their role is. Meaning, without the maintenance team, operations could reasonably expect their equipment could experience an increased amount of unplanned downtime thus preventing them from fulfilling their obligations.Â
Our team has been extremely fortunate in that the number of people who see maintenance as both necessary and value-added is a very strong majority, including most higher-ups.
The company is also small enough that most interactions are still fairly personal by nature. I think this helps to humanize our team, whereas in larger organizations, the maintenance team might be an isolated entity that can become prone to scapegoating. That being said, making those interpersonal connections is critical to maintaining a professional relationship between teams.
Diving deeper, scapegoating can stem from a number of myths. Maintenance sits around doing nothing. Maintenance is incompetent for being unable to resolve downtime in minutes. Maintenance downed a perfectly good machine. Maintenance costs too much. Obviously none of these are true, so dispel the myths and your team's value will increase.
KPIs/metrics help a lot. Of course, these are valuable to pursue on their own simply for focus and improvement. Beyond that, publicizing team goals and accomplishment in a strategic manner will shine a light on the sheer amount of work your team does (which is inevitably a whole lot if you're a maintenance team). A good place to start is asset availability and response time. Compare these to industry standards and set internal benchmarks. If you're above the curve, awesome. If you're not, publicize your goals and what you're doing to meet them. Posting your workload in tandem with these can be risky, but it can usually also help justify why you're not meeting goals.
Lastly, justify preventative maintenance by running cost estimates on planned vs unplanned downtime. The latter will always outweigh PM costs. Remember that no machine is built perfect and will inevitably break! No amount of PMs will change that, but we do what we can do save where we can.
...This ended up being way longer than I intended. 
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Got a little fired up. Hopefully this helps someone out there!
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