08/26/2026
Maintenance managers: What has actually worked when you needed management to fund a maintenance initiative?
That question is at the center of a new article I just finished.
Maintenance may see failing components, inadequate PMs, skills gaps, poor equipment condition, and increasing risk. Upper management may see another request for money.
Bridging those two perspectives is part of the maintenance manager's job.
One idea I explore is to stop presenting maintenance primarily as a cost and instead document the business loss that maintenance can prevent.
Another is to look beyond “recurring failures.”
If one vibrating machine has three loose-wire failures, we recognize a recurring problem. But if five other machines each have one loose-wire failure, those events can easily be overlooked.
Plant-wide, that's eight loose-connection failures.
The bigger question may not be why one machine repeatedly had a loose connection. It may be why the plant had eight electrical failures—and whether the systemic root cause is a lack of electrical preventive maintenance.
The article covers that example, True Downtime Cost, MTBF versus firefighting, maintenance ROI, leadership buy-in, and how to build a case your plant manager can take upstairs.
I'd be interested in hearing how other maintenance managers approach this.
Read: How Maintenance Managers Can Get Management to Invest in Maintenance
https://bin95.com/articles/maintenance-management/justify-maintenance-costs.htm
