Maintenance and Reliability Best Practices. Ramesh Gulati
vision translated into written form. It’s the leader’s view of the direction and purpose of the organization. For many corporate leaders, it is a vital element in any attempt to motivate employees and to give them a sense of priorities.
A mission statement should be a short and concise statement of goals and priorities. In turn, goals are specific objectives that relate to specific periods and are stated regarding facts. The primary goal of any business is to increase stakeholder value. The most important stakeholders are shareholders who own the business, employees who work for the business, and clients or customers who purchase products or services from the business.
The mission should answer four questions:
1. What do we do? (What is the purpose of the organization?)
2. How do we do it? (What’s unique about the organization?)
3. For whom do we do it? (Who are our customers and stakeholders?)
4. What are our values and beliefs?
We can look at each question in more detail to see what the answers should entail:
• What do we do? This question should not be answered in terms of what is physically delivered to customers. Instead, it should address the real needs that are fulfilled when customers buy our products or services. Customers make purchase decisions for many reasons, including economical, logistical,and emotional factors.
• How do we do it? This question captures the more technical elements of the business. Our answer should encompass the physical product or service, how it is sold and delivered to customers, and how it fits with the need that the customer fulfills with its purchase.
• For whom do we do it? The answer to this question is also vital, as it will help us to focus our efforts. Anybody who uses our products or services is our customer. It could be a person or system next in the production line that takes what we build or provides a service. In a broader sense, it could include stakeholders for whom we ultimately do it.
• What are our values and beliefs? Values and beliefs guide our plans, decisions, and actions. Values become real when we demonstrate them in the way we act and the way we insist that others behave. In forward-looking and energized organizations, values are the real boss. They drive the workforce and keep people moving in the right direction.
Developing a Mission Statement
There are three main benefits attributed to mission statements:
1. They help companies focus their strategy by defining some boundaries within which to operate.
2. They define the dimensions along which an organization’s performance is measured and judged.
3. They suggest standards for individual ethical behavior.
In his book First Things First, Stephen Covey pointed out that mission statements are often not taken seriously in organizations because they are developed by top executives, with no buy-in at the lower levels. But it’s a pretty safe assumption that there probably is buy-in when we develop our own mission statements.
First Things First is actually about time management, but Covey and his coauthors used the personal mission statement as an important principle. The idea is that if we live by a statement of what’s really important to us, we can make better time management decisions. The authors asked, “Why to worry about saving minutes when we might be wasting years?”
A mission statement may be valuable, but how in the world do we go about crafting one? As one way to develop a mission statement,Covey talks about visualizing your 80th birthday or 50th wedding anniversary and imagining what all your friends and family would say about you. A somewhat more morbid, but effective, approach is writing your own obituary.
Sometimes vision and mission statements could be a little confusing. To clarify, a comparison of vision and mission statements is shown in Figure 2.7.
FIGURE 2.7 Comparing Vision vs Mission Statement
Can we visualize what it would be like if there were no asset failures or if production met its schedule without any overtime for 1 month or even 3 months, or if there were not a single midnight call for 3 months, and we were able to sleep without worrying?
When developing a mission statement, keep these points in mind:
• The mission statement should describe the overall purpose of the organization.
• If the organization elects to develop a vision statement before developing the mission statement, ask, “Why does the image,the vision, exist—what is its purpose?”This purpose is often the same as the mission.
• When wording the mission statement, consider the organization’s products, services, markets, values, concern for public image, and maybe priorities of activities for survival.
• Also when wording the mission statement, ensure that it is written such that management and employees can infer some order of priorities in how products and services are delivered.
Some sample mission statements related to M&R are:
A Physical Plant Mission Statement (School/University)
The Physical Plant Department is a service organization whose main purpose and goal are to provide the best possible facilities and climate in which to support the instruction, learning programs, and public services of the university. We strive to make our customers feel nurtured,inspired, and uplifted by the excellence of our service and the caring concern of our service providers.
Mission Statement of a Maintenance Department
To manage the business of maintenance in a manner that ensures production effort to yield high-quality products at low operating costs, utilizes all resources, and involves production and maintenance employees working together toward a common goal.
Mission Statement of a Maintenance Organization
To maximize equipment performance, fostering an environment of ownership and pride, through a structured approach to predictive and preventative maintenance.
Mission Statement of the Society of Maintenance & Reliability Professionals
• Facilitate information exchange through a structured network of maintenance and reliability professionals.
• Support maintenance and reliability as an integral part of business management.
• Present a collective voice on maintenance and reliability issues and advance innovative maintenance and reliability practices.
• Promote and support maintenance and reliability education for people, production, and quality processes to improve the work environment.
If the environment changes, mission statements may require revisions to include additional or different needs being fulfilled, delivery systems, or customer groups. With this in mind, vision and mission statements should be revisited periodically to determine whether modifications are desirable to more accurately reflect the current environment or strategic direction.
SMRP recently reviewed and updated its mission statement. It says now:
To develop and promote excellence in maintenance, reliability, and physical asset management.
SMRP’s vision and core value statements (from SMRP’s website, smrp.org) are:
Vision
To be the global leader for the maintenance, reliability, and physical asset management profession.
Values
SMRP values data-driven excellence,