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Survey Says: Need for Maintenance Training

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Training - General

A recent survey shows that industrial maintenance professionals need more training than they're getting, despite their general feeling that management understands the need for that training.

The survey, conducted by Tompkins Associates, Inc., Raleigh, NC, polled more than 475 maintenance supervisors and directors of maintenance engineering about their training needs.

The survey showed that while 35% of respondents felt management in their organizations understood the need for additional maintenance training, more than half of the respondents felt management saw the need for training only "somewhat". Ten percent said management felt more training was unnecessary.

According to the survey, 77% of respondents' companies offer on-site maintenance training sessions for employees. But there is little doubt that those sessions are ineffective: only 29% of those surveyed said the sessions have been effective in upgrading skill levels and performance.

"I'm not surprised at the results," says Ralph "Pete" Peters, general manager of maintenance practice at Tompkins Associates. "I personally don't think maintenance personnel are getting the training they need."

Peters points out that there are many companies, including Tompkins, capable of providing comprehensive maintenance training on a variety of subjects. These training providers can invariably deliver a wider range of training, in more depth, than most companies can develop in-house.

"I think it's also important that the survey showed that management itself sees a need for training," says Peters. "Tremendous benefits can be gained from training."

This is especially true when the training needed is comparatively basic. When asked what types of training they needed, the maintenance pros responded with a no-frills list.

Preventive/predictive maintenance training is needed by 22% of the respondents, with 18% requiring planning and scheduling and 18% requiring continuous improvement training. Learning to measure maintenance performance was important to 16% of the pros, and 11% need training to improve their maintenance storerooms.

"Maintenance storerooms have been around forever, but today's maintenance storerooms are a shambles," says Peters. "It's ironic that that type of training is still a priority.

"Management has to see training as an investment," continues Peters. "They can improve their operations if they train maintenance workers."

Reprinted from an article in Industrial Maintenance and Plant Operations Magazine. Thompkins Associates is an engineering and maintenance management consulting company located in Raleigh, NC.

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