MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT: SHOULD YOU CONTRACT OUT YOUR MAINTENANCE WORK?

摘要

As an option to reduce plant costs, plant managers may consider contracting out maintenance work. This may have some merit, depending on many factors, including the nature of the business. One question that may be asked is, "Is maintenance a part of our 'core business'?" Let's look at a couple of examples. If the business is a hospital, where revenue is generated by the sale of medical services, and maintenance consists of a few specialized activities, such as janitorial, H&V system servicing, and repair of advanced medical diagnostic and monitoring systems, then contracting out these activities is almost certainly the best approach. However, if your business is an old process industry where most maintenance work involves inspections and repairs to production machinery, then both maintenance and operations, as a team, are equally important to the "core business" of producing product, and maintenance should probably be carried out by trained plant employees.