Maintenance method preparer: Job sheet n° 1

Maintenance method preparer: definition and job description

Immerse yourself in the heart of the maintenance ecosystem and highlight its talents and opportunities: this is the mission that Mobility Work has set itself! We are launching a brand new “Job Sheet” series which invites you each time to discover or rediscover a maintenance profession: definition, missions, daily life and testimony... First sheet to launch this series: the position of Maintenance method technician, the technical asset of the maintenance department. Thanks to Jean-François Lambalais, maintenance methods technician at the FMGC, a subsidiary specialized in foundry of the material processing specialist Farinia Group, for its participation in the writing of this article.

What is a Maintenance method technician?

The main mission of the Maintenance Method Preparer is to provide technical work instructions to workshops for the production, manufacture or assembly of goods or equipment or for the performance of a service. He is in charge of studying and optimizing these instructions and ensures compliance with imposed costs and deadlines as well as quality monitoring.

To do this, he develops specifications and is also responsible for writing and updating them: manufacturing procedures, tools, parts, components, assemblies, tests, controls, inspections, inspections, monitoring of time and costs of operations, etc. and more generally, documentary systems, relational, technical and statistical (KPI) from the factory. One of its main missions is thus to gather, in the form of technical documents or instruction sheets (plans, general techniques, PDFs, photos of interventions, etc.), the various regulatory standards and the quality requirements, costs and deadlines imposed, in particular in the case of a maintenance service having or aiming for ISO certification. The preparer coordinates industrial maintenance actions with the technical manager and creates targeted monitoring indicators.

This position requires very good communication skills and a sense of teamwork, as the technician is responsible for organizing and supervising internal and external industrial maintenance activities and interventions. It thus manages relationships with suppliers or service providers external, and monitors, coordinates and negotiates subcontracts and suppliers. He keeps the company's address book up to date by entering them into the CMMS, which involves a significant workload: looking for contacts and information, making contacts, requesting appointments, drawing up quotes at the request of the maintenance manager, ordering parts or services.

Its monitoring role thus applies to the various production processes, but also to stock management: the maintenance method preparer works in collaboration with the purchasing department and with the store manager. In fact, it participates in the management and ordering of stocks of spares, sometimes following inventories for specific interventions, as well as the creation of store references and spare parts titles with the purchasing department.

The technician is also in a position to set up level 1 industrial maintenance actions (greasing, repetitive actions, etc.), and to create and implement recurrences (maintenance plans) in the company's CMMS software (Computer-Aided Maintenance Management). CMMS is an indispensable tool in his daily life: the technician is thus required to fill in and integrate information into the software, by creating or modifying equipment, using this tool to monitor the various interventions. It also manages the various spare parts assigned to the equipment. He helps all people using the CMMS tool, directs them and solves their problems; he is also responsible for integrating users into the CMMS, and for training all maintenance, production and office personnel in its use. Jean-François Lambalais, maintenance methods preparer at FMGC, explains: “This is a very transversal position: in addition to my duties as a preparer, I am also a 5S pilot in the foundry. My partner and I are responsible for carrying out internal audits concerning the cleanliness of the stations, the storage, the wearing of PPE, etc. for the quality/environment department. I also participate in the company's human resources, because I am in charge of controlling the hours of presence, by comparing the hours of intervention in the Mobility Work CMMS and the Sigma-HR human resources management software, in order to see if the hours correspond well.”

The calendar feature offered by Mobility Work allows you to plan all your preventive and predictive maintenance interventions.

It is therefore a very versatile position, in contact with numerous departments within the company.

Issues and challenges of the maintenance methods technician position

The technician, whose mission is to centralize the documentary set, thereby allows the company to access this information 24 hours a day, which ultimately makes it possible to improve the lifespan of equipment and the traceability of maintenance interventions. This thus leads to a reduction in costs thanks to the optimization of industrial maintenance ranges and spare parts. The technician participates directly in improving the quality of the maintenance service for his customer and production.

The maintenance method technician occupies a key position and can therefore sometimes be confronted with challenges in his daily life. It must in fact be available for field teams (technicians, electromechanics, automation engineers); Jean-François Lambalais thus points out to us: “Most technicians prefer to contact me rather than the store to find out if a part is available! ”. It provides them with significant support by preparing and providing all the spare parts, dismantling and greasing ranges necessary for the proper execution of interventions. He develops and develops the procedures for industrial maintenance interventions with the help of technicians and/or the maintenance manager.

It is also capable of detecting the origin of a failure on site or remotely and establishing a diagnosis. He can intervene in the event of a failure and/or coordinate the teams. To do this, the technician uses advanced condition-based maintenance methods and techniques (thermography, vibration analysis, temperature and/or pressure measurement, oil analysis).

In addition, it must keep or have in stock spare parts that are critical or require a long supply period. If a spare part is not available in the store, he must make every effort to get supplies as soon as possible in order to return the broken equipment to its original condition. If this part has never been stored, he must use his entire network of suppliers in order to obtain it as soon as possible and at the lowest cost. The method preparer is thus responsible for keeping the minimum stocks up to date in the ERP tool.

CMMS and maintenance methods technician position

Among the many essential tools in the daily life of the method technician (CAD/CAM, CAD, CAD - AutoCAD for example, GPAO, Trello for checklists, etc.), CMMS plays a key role: it allows him in particular to anticipate all the most common maintenance interventions. This tool contributes greatly to the evolution of the service, both in terms of speed (search for documentation, equipment, etc.) and the execution of reliable maintenance in the field.

Above all, it is a tool for preparing and planning interventions for all company operators. CMMS plays an indispensable role in the research and provision of specific spare parts for original replacement or for testing and modifications. A good analysis of service activity and costs per equipment allows the company and its services to improve their operation.

The production department also benefits from the functionalities of CMMS, as it makes it possible to optimize production tools and ensure the proper functioning of equipment by carrying out effective and rapid corrective and preventive maintenance.

All the news relating to current interventions are available from the Mobility Work application news feed

More generally, the entire company is seeing improvements following the implementation of an effective CMMS tool, in particular a reduction in maintenance costs and an optimization of the production tool. A new generation CMMS such as Mobility Work makes it possible to retrieve data and maintenance KPI (s) indicators, to measure the reliability and maintainability of production tools and thus to answer this question well known to maintenance departments: should maintenance or investment? The ultimate goal of mastering this tool is to optimize the use of production resources, improve costs, develop business and reduce investments.

How to become a maintenance methods technician?

Accessible after a technical diploma at the Bac+2 level (BTS or DUT) or after a professional baccalaureate supplemented by field experience, this training offers varied career prospects in various industrial sectors. Jean-François Lambalais, for his part, became a technician after an experience as a technician, during which he helped the maintenance manager with preparation tasks during summer work.

Are you looking for opportunities and new challenges in your job as a method technician in industrial maintenance? Move up a gear and send your application to Peugeot Japy Technologies in Valentigney (25), a subsidiary of Farinia Group and partner of Mobility Work specializing in the machining and assembly of high-tech automotive sub-assemblies.

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