Maintenance Practices Function Audit

Transfield Worley Solutions performed an audit of the maintenance practices and maintenance function at a dairy processing plant. The audit identified the changes necessary to achieve desired improvements to the maintenance function, and reported on the maturity of maintenance systems.

Transfield Worley Solutions was able to offer comprehensive professional and technical services, calling on broad experience across several industries, to assess the client’s maintenance practices and systems.

By applying our combined knowledge of the best practices in maintenance, Transfield Worley Solutions was able to tailor the audit criteria and consequent recommendations around the specific needs of the client.

The client was particularly interested in benchmarking maintenance against other industries, to invigorate the maintenance function with innovative ideas for improvement.

Scope & Approach:

The audit of the client’s maintenance function was tailored to encompass:

• maintenance organisational competency
• maintenance skills and experience at management
• supervisory and trade levels
• quality, safety and environment issues
• computerised maintenance management
• systems performance
• sub-contractor management

The review of maintenance practices covered the systems and performance for:

• planning and scheduling
• maintenance task execution
• outage planning, control and execution
• materials management
• preventative and predictive maintenance techniques
• reliability engineering methodologies
• configuration management
• modifications and capital projects

The audit was conducted by interview, reviews of maintenance data and comparisons of performance measures against industry best practice.

The key benefits to this client were:

• setting a benchmark for comparison of the maintenance practice against other industries
• recommended changes to organisational structure and operational practices to gain improvements in maintenance productivity
• identification of the maintenance functions best practices to give confidence to the client
• increased awareness amongst the maintenance employees of the current best practices and the current levels being achieved
• an improved understanding by the maintenance team of processes, procedures and improvement plans • identification of opportunities and key tasks for improvement in maintenance practices