Benchmarking Best Practice in Maintenance Management

Citation

Lewis, A. (2012), "Benchmarking Best Practice in Maintenance Management", Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 126-127. https://doi.org/10.1108/14635771211218407

Benchmarking Best Practices in Maintenance Management, second edition, by Terry Wireman is a practical reference book written primarily for practitioners. The book provides a detailed overview on many topics to educate those unfamiliar with maintenance management. Wireman documents many best practices that experienced maintenance managers are familiar with, but may not have documented it in detail within their own organizations. Academics will also find the book valuable because it provides a practical glimpse of what a maintenance organization needs to establish a strong benchmarking program. This is especially important because maintenance management is an under‐researched topic. Practitioners and academics alike will find the detailed index and carefully considered chapter titles beneficial when consulting this book as a reference.

The most unique feature of the book is the multiple choice evaluation found in Chapter 1 “Analyzing maintenance management”. The evaluation within the chapter can be used by the reader to quantitatively evaluate 16 aspects of maintenance organizations. The evaluation includes a self‐scoring structure to help the reader quickly assess what areas of the maintenance organization the strongest and weakest by plotting the score for each aspect on a radar plot. Some of the aspects within the evaluation include maintenance organizations, training programs, work orders, preventive maintenance and maintenance automation.

Compared to the first edition, published in 2004, the largest change to the second edition is the addition of an introductory section within Chapter 1 to provide context for the evaluation by briefly describing each of the 16 sections. This is a valuable addition to the book, as Chapter 1 of the first edition starts immediately with the evaluation. Although this provides value to readers of the second edition, the changes are not significant enough for owners of the first edition to purchase the second edition.

The book is valuable to researchers because it formally defines benchmarking in the context of maintenance management best practices. Additionally, practical tips, such as those found on pages 66‐67 which discuss traps to benchmarking, can help researchers understand real‐world challenges faced by maintenance managers. When researchers understand real‐world challenges, it is possible to advance both research and industry goals.

Chapters 2 through 12 build upon Chapter 1. This structure is valuable because the readers who complete the evaluation can use the information in the remaining chapters to improve low scoring areas. Chapter 9 is likely to be especially useful to the readers of Benchmarking: An International Journal because it includes many ideas about the types of reports that can be useful for effective decision making. However, the book lacks examples of actual reports and/or excerpts from the reports discussed in the chapter. Adding examples would add value to the academic reader and those who are establishing proactive maintenance management practices in their organizations.

Editorially, the book is free of typos and is easy to read. The sentence structure is well developed to allow the concepts to be understood quickly. However, some of the figures and formatting of the text could be improved to increase readability. For example, many of the figures are bulleted lists. In addition, although the book is a valuable contribution to maintenance management and benchmarking literature there are several areas where the book could be improved. First, the sources of statistics are infrequently cited and a reference section is absent from the book. For example, on page 218 a partial citation of Sky Magazine, with a date of February 1990 is provided. However, further information, such as the name of the article or author, to find out more about the summary of the “Best of the Best Maintenance Organization Award,” the topic which the source was cited for, is not provided. An example of a statistic that is not supported by an example or references is found on page 46: it can take three to five years for an organization to realize the total cost savings from implementing a best practice. Although the lack of references maybe because the data is derived from years of industry experience, the limited number of full citations and references to source data can make it challenging for academics and researchers to fully utilize the data because the original source cannot be consulted for further study.

A final shortcoming is that the industry sector(s) which the book is written for is not clearly stated. Although Chapters 7 and 11 make reference to manufacturing and process operations, at a high level, many of the topics and recommendations can apply to most types of maintenance organizations. However, some of the statistics and how maintenance management practices are applied may only be relevant or accurate for certain industry sectors. For example, the reliability and redundancy requirements, and thus maintenance costs, for an air handler in a manufacturing facility are different than an air handler in an office building.

Conclusion

The content and findings of the book align with industry practices and the most common maintenance challenge is properly cited – maintenance management is often reactive. The book provides practical guidance through the use of an evaluation tool included in Chapter 1. The remaining 11 chapters can be used by readers to improve the low scoring aspects of the maintenance organization evaluated.

Although the industry sector(s) the book was written about is not clearly identified, conceptually, the content is relevant to most maintenance organizations. Any maintenance manager seeking to perform a quick, but through, evaluation of his or her maintenance organization can benefit from reading Terry Wireman's book, Benchmarking Best Practices in Maintenance Management, second edition.