Roadmap to Reliability : Maintenance Craft Skills 

Up to 50% increase in sales thanks to technical skills development in manufacturing!¹   

Following on from the previous article, you have now drawn up your maintenance strategy. You know which tasks to do, when, by whom and how. Now you need to ensure that your maintenance workers are properly trained to carry out these actions. Craft occupations encompass the various skilled roles involved in maintenance, requiring expertise across multiple trades.

1. Fundamentals of Industrial Reliability: Technical Skills

Technical skills are essential to ensure the reliability of industrial operations. From the handling of threaded fasteners to the precise alignment of belts and shafts, every detail counts in maintaining flawless operations. The variety of tools involved and the importance of identifying the equipment needed for specific jobs cannot be overstated. Maintenance craft skills require careful equipment selection and the use of needed tools for each maintenance task to ensure efficiency and safety.

Maintenance workers are responsible for repairing electrical and electrical or mechanical equipment as part of their duties. They must meet specifications and interpret technical information from manuals and work related documents, relying on strong reading comprehension skills. Understanding production processes, effective manufacture, and the role of raw materials is crucial for maintaining operational reliability. It is also necessary to evaluate quality during maintenance tasks to ensure all standards are met.

Developing these skills improves work quality, extends equipment life and reduces downtime.

2. The Importance of Ongoing Training

Your maintenance needs may change due to a modification of your maintenance strategy. You need to ensure that your maintenance staff are properly trained to carry it out.

For example, you may have decided that instead of replacing all belts every six months, you will now carry out a deflection inspection every three months. How can you ensure that your staff are properly trained for this? It’s a complete change from what they were doing before, so you need to make sure they’re able to implement this maintenance strategy.

Active learning and future problem solving are essential for staff to adapt to new maintenance approaches, as they must continuously update their skills and anticipate upcoming challenges. Maintenance staff must use decision making, judgment and decision making, and evaluate options when faced with complex problems and troubleshooting tasks. Gathering and analyzing related information is necessary to develop alternative solutions and implement solutions effectively. Time management and active listening are also important for coordinating training and maintenance activities efficiently. When issues are identified during the transition to new strategies, taking corrective action is crucial to ensure successful implementation and ongoing performance.

3. A clear and progressive career path for all roles

In the long term, ongoing training is crucial to ensuring operational excellence. Skills development plans must be designed specifically for each trade, considering the industry’s changing needs. Training programs for maintenance craft skills often involve pipe fitting and other techniques to ensure a well-rounded skill set.

Most importantly, they not only need to be ready to execute the maintenance strategy today, but we believe it’s even more crucial that they have an evolutionary path through time, a complete career path for their entire career. For example, a maintenance technician benefits greatly from hands-on experience, which is essential for developing practical skills and advancing in their role.

Where am I going to be in three years, five years, ten years?

Maybe some of your mechanics want to move into reliability technician roles, be certified in vibration analysis, for example, or certified in infrared camera image capture.

So it’s very important that you build these pathways for all roles in your organization, from mechanics to planners and schedulers, to supervisors, managers and even your plant manager..

Example for a Reliability Engineer:

• Level 1: basics and fundamentals of reliability and maintenance (lubrication, vibration, thermography, precision maintenance)
• Level 2: strenghtening the fundamentals of reliability programs through asset master data, criticality ranking, failure modes-based maintenance strategies, and planning and shceduling best practices
• Level 3: develop leadership in RCA, defect elimination, ROI and business case for reliability investment, management of change.

Conclusion

By developing the technical skills of your staff, you lay the foundations for unshakeable industrial reliability and lasting operational excellence. Your company’s success depends on your team’s ability to evolve and adapt to new industry requirements.

Erwan Lecuyer,
Spartakus Technologies
[email protected]

1. Title data source: National Center for the Middle Market  ↩︎