Some keys to implementing successful maintenance backlog management

Backlog management is an area that is often done more as a routine task than as a vibrant and strategic element of the maintenance effort.

When done correctly, successful backlog management systems will deliver almost immediate impacts in a range of areas, including:

• The ability to forecast maintenance spend over the short to medium term with high accuracy. Meaning real visibility of resource demands. 
• The ability to produce accurate capacity schedules, driving inefficiency out of execution
• Reduction of garbage in the work order backlog
• Increased accuracy of historical work for bad actor and improvement analysis. 

And of course, the reason why we are doing this in the first place. A better running plant? Why? Because the right work, is being done at the right time, with the right resources, procedures, parts, times...

When done correctly, backlog management includes the following elements:

• An upfront prioritization system for emergent works.
• Work request / creation exception reporting. 
• Focus on capture of work delay codes, enabling efficiency and time and motion optimization.
• Capacity scheduling system and process
• Suite of work forecasting reports. From resource levels through to weekly / daily inventory whereabouts updates. 

The initial value we see in backlog management is the improvement in work processes and asset performance. The secondary, and arguably more important impact over the long term, is the improved maintenance history to take even further optimizing decisions on.

In fact, the amount of maintenance work order history that is not analyzed for anything beyond basic failure information is a wasted asset.