One bad maintenance practice can negate the benefits of otherwise following best practices. Here are two more bad practices you should avoid:
Bad Practice #2 — Using "Train the Trainer" to Avoid Sending Other Personnel to Training
The idea is a manager will go to the training, then come back and train those who didn't go. But maintenance managers are seldom credentialed trainers, and plants that do this seldom have onsite resources for proper training. This approach usually wastes the training budget.
Bad Practice #3 — Sending Only Your "Best" People to Training
This approach fails to adequately train employees across your roster, and it leaves you with too many untrained maintenance people doing the work.
Instead of using the above stratgies, develop a training matrix that lists the skill areas on one axis and people's names on the other. For each skill area, you need X number of people skilled in it. Put together a realistic training budget to fill in the squares on your matrix. Then assign individuals to those squares based on their work responsibilities rather than their perceived star status.