MSMS: 5-Day Program: Maintenance Management Skills for Supervisors, Team Leaders and Managers

Combine our introductory and continuing trainings and jumpstart your team leaders to a new level of performance!

This comprehensive course has been designed for new or experienced supervisors to give them the concrete skills and knowledge needed to be successful on the job. Focus on the necessary management and people skills required to foster maximum productivity, high quality and good morale. Ideal candidates supervise maintenance workers or manage maintenance through lower-level supervisors. Working team leaders would also benefit from this program. Also recommended for people being considered for advancement. Leaders from other departments that work with maintenance would be welcome also because they could learn both about being leaders as well as about basic maintenance management.

Our promise for this program is that your leadership will be more effective and have a better quality of life. This effectiveness would gradually translate to lower turnover and increased productivity

  • How to delegate effectively in a maintenance environment.
  • Know what to do when morale suffers.
  • Increase the reliability of your equipment and your workforce through thoughtfully-implemented trainings and monitoring systems.
  • Increase your own productivity through time management techniques.
  • Deal effectively with difficult people.
  • Three rules of delegation to morale.
  • Assess and work with the strengths and weaknesses of your workgroup.
  • Setting up work schedules that add to the productive day, reduce confusion and get your users rooting for you.
  • Supervising friends and older employees successfully and sensitively.
  • Identify the great PM inspector within your crew.
  • How to take seminars and retain more information.
  • Specific techniques to make the right decisions in high stress situations.
  • Adapting PM to your environment.
  • Choosing the right predictive tool for the job.


Attributes of a great maintenance supervisor: : Effectiveness as a supervisor requires a balance of good technical, management and people skills. The course starts with looking at how to motivate maintenance workers. Techniques are introduced to improve learning for all seminars.

Basic motivation: What motivates maintenance workers, and how do we use that understanding for good results? Case histories and discussion help participants understand motivation from real life examples. This discussion will be followed up in Day Three.

Leadership evaluation clinic: Each supervisor or manager brings something unique to their situation. We guide participants through a self-assessment process to understand their supervisory strengths, where they need development and where they have weaknesses that could be exploited by subordinates or peers. Results are incorporated into each participant's action plan.

Maintenance planning - Short and long-term: This course features an overview of the basic maintenance planning process and outcomes. Short and long-term techniques are covered; matching strategy to technique; problems in implementation.

Maintenance scheduling: This course features an overview of the basic maintenance scheduling process. Results? A better partnership with various user-groups within the organization.

Coping with difficult people: Successful interactions with difficult people and situations are a key task for supervisors. Participants are coached through a process to maximize the probability that the outcome will be positive.


The complete PM (Preventive Maintenance) cycle: The Complete PM Cycle introduces the concept of using a PM model of organizing all maintenance. Checklist is included to install new PM system or revise ex¬isting one.

Short course in TPM: Gives you the basics of Total Productive Maintenance in a nutshell. Includes the seven steps, the six losses and OEE calculations.

PdM and condition-based maintenance: This section discusses various equipment inspection modes (vibration, infrared, ultrasonic, etc.) used among world-class organizations and provides guidelines for their appropriate use.

Staffing problems of the maintenance supervisor: Maintenance supervisors face tough problems. Issues include dealing with discipline, supervising older and younger employees, supervising friends, drug and alcohol abuse. The goal is to give the supervisor some background in these issues.

Supervisor productivity enhancement: Introduction to time management techniques. The first step is to choose goals for the activities you want to increase your time commitment to. This section includes 10 time savers. (To be continued on Day 3)


How to supercharge your time (Continued from day 2): Building on the concepts from the prior day, we will build specific projects to help the participants. Productivity improvement comes from more advanced specific time management tech¬niques designed for maintenance supervisors. Includes the daily habits of highly successful supervisors, personal planning, improved productivity, and resources for additional focus.

Lean Maintenance is one of the hottest concepts among world-class organizations today. In a world of tight budgets and scarce resources, how do you cut unnecessary procedures and resource waste while delivering the same (OR HIGHER!) level of quality to your user groups? Includes discussion on getting your employees involved in reducing waste and an exercise in how to develop, write-up, execute and report on Lean projects and improvements.

Learn from successful maintenance supervisors how to motivate your work group: This section builds on material from the beginning of Day 1 with additional motivation techniques used by actual supervisors and managers' worldwide. Current findings on motivation, introduction of strategies of success¬ful motivation techniques compiled from actual maintenance crews. Answer the important question, how can a maintenance supervisor motivate the workgroup?


Decision making, Delegation, One Minute Manager: Supervisors have to make hundreds of decisions on a weekly basis. This section gives guidelines for better decisions. Delegation is the key to success. The second part of this section introduces a model of delegation that has weathered to passage of time.

Root Cause Analysis (RCA): One of most efficient methods for determining what went wrong in the event of an unexpected breakdown. Introduction of general principals, the five "whys," and discussion of real-life examples. Participants are introduced to the techniques and tips for implementation.

Introduction to Reliability Centered Analysis (RCM): This section offers a quick overview of RCM processes, ideas and outcomes covering the high points of this important process

Managing large maintenance jobs and projects: a short introduction to the skills necessary to manage large maintenance jobs and projects with an emphasis on supervision.


Everything you need to know about craft training: Teaching and coaching, Issue: how to run a 2000's factory with 70's skills, preparation worksheets, checklists, techniques, sources of materials, how to get the most from people through training. Measuring effectiveness of training.

Craft training exercise, actually set-up craft training: Workshop in teaching and coaching, students will use worksheets and checklists to design a real skills training exercise. Students can use the materials they prepare in this exercise when they get back to their facility

Workshop in communications: How good are you as a communicator? Improve your ability to get your point across and be understood by maintenance workers. Improve your ability to get your point across. Make sure you can be understood by maintenance workers. Exercise in improving your communica¬tion skills.

Making meetings more effective: : Managers manage meetings as well as people, but few of them understand how to manage them as effective communications devices. We cover some of the best strategies for avoiding time wasters and energizing participants to move forward.

Putting it all together: Putting all the information together and develop a plan for suc¬cess. Improve your maintenance I.Q. through selected readings and resources. Increase your value to your department.

Action Plan: Time is set aside for teams from the same area to put together an action plan for implementing in their own organization.

"My entire Maintenance department has changed for the better because of what I have taken from these classes."
John Mullinax, Maintenance Manager, AXSYS Technologies, Inc.

Good content very practical applicable to our maintenance practices.
Raffie Musaib Ali, Powergen, Trinidad