Managing Plant Lubrication Maintenance Labor

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Managing Plant Lubrication Maintenance Labor: Centralized or Distributed?

What is the best approach for managing the plant lubrication labor? Have all the technicians reporting to one individual? Have the technicians report to the director maintenance supervisor for a particular area (preferably the area that they work in)? The department supervisors would love to have a ‘floater’ available to tackle any urgent issues that arise during the week. But then again, having a floater tends to increase the amount of work considered to be urgent, and decreases the amount of lubrication work that gets done – which increases the amount of ‘urgent work’ through failures just that much more.

What about from the lubrication program manager’s perspective? It is impossible to assure that the required tasks are fulfilled each week if the labor isn’t under your control. Further, since the area supervisors are busy wrestling with their immediate issues, they have little time to focus on the strategic work, including defect elimination and continuous improvement.

In my opinion, once the control of available labor is removed from the person with the task of assuring lubrication activities are fulfilled each week then the program is on a long progressive slide to failure. Better to leave the group together, reporting to one person, with the clear requirement from making continuous improvement in the lubrication plan.

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