10. Maintenance
Smart maintenance
Why maintenance is so important, not only to the standard, but also as an essential business control.
Smart Maintenance: Why Compliance Is Your Best Friend
Let’s talk maintenance. Wait! Don’t zone out just yet. Maintenance might sound about as exciting as watching paint dry, but it’s the unsung hero of your business.
At its core, maintenance compliance isn’t just about ticking boxes for auditors; it’s about safeguarding your business and ensuring everything that leaves your site is consistently safe, legal and to the quality agreed with the customer.
Maintenance Controls—Your Silent Guardians
Imagine you’ve got state-of-the-art equipment, running smoothly—until it isn’t. Without proper maintenance, equipment breakdowns become more frequent, potentially contaminating your products or causing quality issues. Maintenance controls act as proactive steps, making sure your equipment and facilities don’t negatively impact your products. It’s all about preventing contamination, reducing breakdowns, and ensuring consistent quality.
Maintenance Compliance—It’s Just Good Business
Complying with standards like BRCGS, FSSC 22000, IFS Food, and SQF isn’t about jumping through bureaucratic hoops. It’s smart business practice. A robust maintenance management system ensures your product gets out the door on time, meets your quality benchmarks, and keeps customers happy. You’re not just preparing for audits; you’re streamlining operations, reducing downtime, and boosting your bottom line.
Getting Your Team on Board
The person who leads the maintenance system isn’t just another manager; they’re the first line of defense, overseeing the development, implementation, and monitoring of your maintenance procedures. But they’re not alone—every team member, from maintenance coordinators to engineers, play a part in keeping things running smoothly.
Small Changes, Big Impacts
Even minor adjustments in your equipment or processes can significantly impact product safety and quality. Something as simple as updating settings or calibrating equipment incorrectly can cause major issues down the line. That’s why good project management is critical, to ensure that changes, big or small, are handled with care, assessed for risks, and implemented safely.
Embrace the Cycle: Plan, Do, Check, Act
Maintenance is just like any other compliance system – it’s based on the plan, do, check, act cycle. ‘Plan’ the maintenance jobs, ‘do’ them, regularly ‘check’ your results, and ‘act’ on the improvements that are highlighted from the review. Keeping this cycle spinning ensures continual improvement and adaptation, keeping your site not just compliant, but thriving.
Proving compliance to maintenance standards doesn’t have to be dull or dreaded. Embrace it, streamline it, and watch as your operations become safer, more efficient, and ultimately, more profitable. After all, a well-maintained site isn’t just good practice—it’s smart business.
Further reading – maintenance articles
We have a set of maintenance articles which are written to explain the requirements of the standards, for engineering, equipment and maintenance.
Understanding maintenance compliance
Planned preventative maintenance and condition-based maintenance
Maintenance documentation
If you’re looking for a smart way of updating your maintenance systems, take a look at our documentation pack.
You can overhaul your documentation quickly, knowing that it’s fully compliant with the standard that you work to.
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