Oftentimes, an accountant or a financial expert will take a look at the incomings and outgoings of a business’ accounts, only to find that a huge amount of cash has been spent on maintenance. This is an area of the business that will raise eyebrows, seeing as it’s not actually adding value to your business or investing in new machinery or solutions, but is instead keeping various processes running as they should be. This article will explain how you can take a better, smarter approach to maintenance in order to keep costs down in the future.
Investment
Slightly paradoxically, if you’re concerned that your maintenance costs are too high, it’s usually a sign that you’re not spending enough on them. Here’s why. Maintenance is the act of ensuring that your facility is able to continue operating safely and securely into the future, without any major disruptions. Yet, some maintenance activities only put off further wear and tear or damage, which then requires further maintenance. If you spend more on materials and more on expert workers to install your equipment in the first instance, you might find that everything in your facility lasts longer.
Material Examples
Next, take a look at materials as an example of what it means to invest in your maintenance differently. Most large business and industrial facilities will have a large parking lot outside. These lots have a lifespan of around ten years before they begin looking seriously shabby (five years for those parking lots that are exposed to extremes in temperature). But they can last for twenty years if the right materials are used. South Central Sealing and Paving explains how correctly painted lines on the right asphalt surface can mean that your maintenance costs are lower in the long-run, therefore leaving your parking lot looking smart for many years to come.
Personnel
Then, there are the personnel who perform your routine maintenance. These are actually incredibly important personnel, especially for those businesses that are running some form of production line or an engineering-heavy operation. They help determine how your processes operate and how much you spend on new machinery in order to make your products faster. It’s their call whether you replace an older model preemptively or wait for it to break. In all these examples, you need a maintenance operative that you can truly trust, and one that knows that you’re seeking to reduce your maintenance expenditure in the long term.
Financial Tracking
In order to have clarity over any of the changes that you make to your maintenance approach, you’ll want to begin tracking this metric in your financial statements. Your goal is to see the cost of your maintenance falling over time, even if you did have to invest a little more in the initial phase of your approach. By tracking your spend over time, you’ll be able to vindicate your new approach, showing your colleagues that it’s possible to keep costs low by making a larger initial investment in materials and skills.
Make sure that you’re not overspending on maintenance costs by following the tips outlined in this short guide.
