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M-News Edition 22
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M-News - the Maintenance Newsletter

Edition 22, February 2002

Contents

In this edition...
Web Site News - Major Site Upgrade
Feature Article - Making Maintenance a Priority in Your Organisation
Feature Article - How to be a Smart ASP Buyer
Feature Article - Effectively Manage the Preventive Maintenance Backlog
Feature Article - Implementing Information Systems, from Utopia to Reality
Survey Results - Maintenance Budgeting and Cost Control
Current Survey - Maintenance Salaries
Recommended Books
On the Lighter Side - Engineering Humor

If you wish to receive notification of future copies of this newsletter by email, please register at www.plant-maintenance.com/registration.shtml. If you have any feedback on the newsletter, or have something to contribute, please send me an e-mail.

Web Site News - Major Site Upgrade

We are pleased to announce that the Plant Maintenance Resource Center website (www.plant-maintenance.com) has undergone a major transformation. The same content is there, you should be glad to know, but we have attempted to give the site a much cleaner, more contemporary feel, as well as making it easier to find what you are looking for. Why don't you browse through the site, and let me know by e-mail at webmaster@plant-maintenance.com what you think of the changes we have made. While you are there, why don't you check out the following new features:

  • New, drop-down, cascading menus for site navigation. Note that you will need to have a relatively recent browser to take advantage of this feature - the last couple of releases of MS Internet Explorer, and of Netscape should work OK.
  • A completely revamped bookstore at www.plant-maintenance.com/maintenance_books.shtml. We now feature our top five recommendations for maintenance-related books, as well as our current top ten best sellers. All books have been categorised to make it easier to find what you are looking for, and our recommended books in each subject area have also been highlighted.
  • A new articles section focusing on Design for Maintainability articles. This can be viewed at www.plant-maintenance.com/maintenance_articles_maintainability.shtml

Feature Article - Making Maintenance a Priority in Your Organisation

This article, kindly reprinted from the Paradigm Standard newsletter issued by Paradigm Business Systems, discusses how to obtain greater recognition for the importance of maintenance in your organization. It can be read at http://www.plant-maintenance.com/articles/maintenance_priority.shtml.

Feature Article - How to be a Smart ASP Buyer

With ASP's becoming the new technology method of deploying maintenance software, Charles Arsenault of Arsenault Associates has developed a checklist to use as a guide in selecting an ASP provider. This article is available at
http://www.plant-maintenance.com/articles/ASP_buyer.shtml.

Feature Article - Effectively Manage the Preventive Maintenance Backlog

Some tips from Sami Syed on getting your PM Backlog under control. You can read this article at http://www.plant-maintenance.com/articles/PM_backlog.shtml.

Feature Article - Implementing Information Systems, from Utopia to Reality

In this paper, Jose Duran, of the Woodhouse Partnership, approaches some of the typical problems encountered when using Information Technology (IT), including CMMS implementation. You can read the full article at http://www.plant-maintenance.com/articles/IT_Utopia_or_Reality.pdf. Note that you will need to have the free Adobe Acrobat reader installed to be able to view this file.

Survey Results - Maintenance Budgeting and Cost Control

The results of this survey have been being compiled and the key findings are:

  • Overwhelmingly, budgets are prepared based on the previous year's budget, with over one-third of respondents also indicating that budgets were adjusted to meet management cost targets
  • In general, maintenance budgets appear to be prepared with a moderate level of detail.
  • Maintenance Managers are most involved in the budgeting process, with Maintenance Planners and Supervisors being about half as likely as the Maintenance Manager to be involved in the process.
  • Maintenance Managers, Production Managers and Engineers are most likely to own the Maintenance budget.
  • The overwhelming majority of budgets are prepared or revised annually, but many organisations update their budgets more often than this.
  • The overwhelming majority of cost reports are issued monthly, with weekly being the next most popular response.
  • Maintenance Managers are most likely to receive regular maintenance cost reports. Shop floor maintenance personnel are more likely to be kept "out of the loop".

The full results can be viewed at www.plant-maintenance.com/articles/budget-survey-02.shtml

Current Survey - Maintenance Salaries

This survey continues until March 15, 2002. All results are completely confidential, and the more people that respond, the more accurate the results will be. Ask all your friends and colleagues to participate! To date, we have 113 responses, but we need a lot more than that to give accurate, detailed results. You can complete the survey, or view the results to date at http://www.plant-maintenance.com/survey.shtml.

Recommended Books

Some of the books that have previously been reviewed on this site, and which we strongly recommend are listed below:

For details on all of these books, and many more, visit our revamped bookstore at http://www.plant-maintenance.com/maintenance_books.shtml.

On the Lighter Side - Engineering Humor

To the engineer, all matter in the universe can be placed into one of two categories:

  1. things that need to be fixed, and
  2. things that will need to be fixed after they have had a few minutes to play with them.

I hope you have enjoyed this newsletter. All feedback, comments and contributions to future editions are very welcome (as are enquiries about contributions to, and sponsorship of, this newsletter).

Alexander (Sandy) Dunn
Plant Maintenance Resource Center
webmaster@plant-maintenance.com
http://www.plant-maintenance.com

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