FM in industrial and manufacturing sector

Providing facilities management to industrial and manufacturing sites comes with its own set of unique challenges as I recently found out. These challenges are simply not about logistics of managing multiple plant sites, each with its own routine maintenance schedules and necessary engineering support that is required. These challenges arise solely as a result of working in what is often a 24/7 environment where hard services like maintenance, engineering or equipment upgrades must work alongside the provision of traditional facilities management services such as cleaning and all without negatively affecting the safe and reliable impact of the site.

These are very real aspects of a well-planned and -executed facilities management package and should never be underestimated. The ultimate challenge for any service provider is to ensure the service delivered takes into consideration the critical element of each equipment or plant area and the impact it can have on the overall operation of the site. This means productivity is maintained and production downtime is avoided at all costs. This is of vital importance considering that one hour lost in production can be very costly in many instances.

The key driver in any business environment is to ensure the best efficiency is first achieved and then maintained. This is clearly the case for any industrial or manufacturing site.

One typical area of involvement for facilities management companies is asset management. In this case, it requires accessing the plant and equipment of a company wherever it is installed and developing effective ways of monitoring, maintaining and maximising its performance. It is in this scenario that a facilities manager can deliver real value by first working with plant engineers and service teams to develop a comprehensive maintenance programme that includes not just the engineering aspects but also other traditional aspects of facilities management such as cleaning.

For many businesses in the industrial and manufacturing sectors, having the right IT infrastructure and software in place to capture the correct state of maintenance of its assets may be problematic. In this area, service providers can be relevant by using proven systems that can capture a comprehensive overview of the age profile, location and condition of plant assets.

There is also the issue of scheduling routine cleaning and waste management tasks around workers’ hours to avoid disruption as well as developing models to minimise downtime during essential maintenance and to ensure critical operations are maintained. Here, the facilities manager can add value by drawing on his experience and capability to react and adapt to the demands of a working environment.

Having a facilities management team on board that understands such issues ensures unnecessary downtime is avoided. For instance, if assets are kept clean, amount of maintenance required can be reduced and this ensures productivity is maintained.

Another area where facilities managers can play an important role is in planning and executing efficient plant shutdown. Today, a shutdown can be a strategic opportunity to review and direct plant productivity and capacity rather than a ‘routine’ task.

Maintaining stringent health and safety regulations in a working industrial or manufacturing environment cannot be underestimated. Facilities managers will be expected to add their own value through improving practices that help to change the day-to-day behaviour of individuals and contribute a safer working environment.

Importantly, health and safety will have a direct impact on plant productivity and an effectively managed site can realise significant efficiency improvement when the right culture is developed such as encouraging client’s staff to report safety issues like spillages, blockages and build-up of potentially explosive dust which if left unchecked can result in equipment downtime or an area of the factory having to be temporarily closed down.