Answers:
- Structure of maintenance budget
- Role of maintenance auditor
- Codification of spare parts
- Types of maintenance benchmarking
Structure of maintenance budget
Every department in an organization follows a particular structure to present its maintenance budget. A maintenance budget represents an incremental cost statement over a fixed period of time. The maintenance budget structure should be flexible and dynamic so that changes can be incorporated periodically. Moreover, it should have adequate information so that it can be used for various purposes, such as:
Cost reporting: The budget should be able to report the actual cost against the planned cost in order to find items showing unacceptable deviations. This is important for making adjustments in the fund and resource usage of these items. The variations in costs can be analysed further to identify the causes of deviation and help managers in decision making.
Forecasting: Maintenance budget contains the budgetary figures of the previous years as well the projected figures for the coming fiscal year. This helps in forecasting the outcome of the current budgetary figures based on historical trends.
Role of maintenance auditor
A maintenance auditor plays a vital role in conducting the audit process in an organization. He/she is responsible for ensuring the success of maintenance audit. For that, he should have complete knowledge of the auditing process and procedures and should be unbiased while performing the audit. The following are the main functions of a maintenance auditor:
- Interacting with departmental heads to get a clear understanding of the goals, objectives, operations, and financial status of the organization.
- Identifying the loopholes and defects in the existing maintenance system in order to suggest the areas of improvement.
Codification of spare parts
A single machine or equipment may require several spare parts for restoration at the time of failure. It is often cumbersome and time consuming for maintenance personnel to identify the required spare parts from the entire stock. Apart from this, at the time of purchasing new spare parts, an organization should have clear specifications of the spare parts.
Types of maintenance benchmarking
Internal maintenance benchmarking: It is a process of evaluating the performance of an organization’s maintenance system (or function) by using various internal parameters or benchmarks, such as machine downtimes and frequency of failures.
External maintenance benchmarking: It is a process of comparing the performance of an organization’s maintenance function with the best maintenance practices in the industry based on parameters, such as average downtime of a plant, shutdowns, maintenance cost, and quality of machines and equipment. It helps an organization to determine the current performance of its maintenance function.