Is the ideal maintenance manager a woman?

It is the second time in 20 editions that BEMAS has crowned a duo with the title. You can read more about the competition, the finalists and the winners in this magazine. 

People manager

A very wise man with many years of experience in maintenance once told me that maintenance management is only 20% based on technique and methods. 80% of the results are achieved by dealing better with the people in the organisation. So it goes without saying that emotional intelligence is an important asset to be a successful maintenance manager. Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to recognise, manage and communicate emotions and to respond appropriately to others' emotions.  On average, women have a higher EQ, which means they show more relational leadership. However, there are also studies that state that among top managers, gender differences in emotional intelligence are completely blurred. So real leaders are emotionally competent, whether they are male or female. 

Doing the right things

All this does not alter the fact that in maintenance, besides the emotional and human factor, a whole range of knowledge, skills and methodologies come into play. I have expressed my admiration for maintenance technicians before. Carrying out a repair or maintenance job correctly requires very specific knowledge, skills and experience.  As a maintenance manager, you had better realise the importance of this. This is expressed in appreciating the work done and setting high quality standards. In addition, you also want the many maintenance tasks to be carried out cost-efficiently and safely. In short, as a manager you want to do maintenance correctly.  But this is not enough. The real goal of maintenance is to achieve the desired (production) reliability.  Therefore, it is important to continuously ask yourself whether you are still doing the right things. Do we have the right maintenance programme? What can we do to solve recurring problems once and for all? Answering these questions in order to decide to 'do the right things' adds at least as much value as 'doing things right'. 

Long term and short term

The success of the award-winning maintenance managers at BASF is undoubtedly due in part to the strategic decision the company made a few years ago to place precisely these two areas of focus in maintenance with two different functions. The maintenance manager has a rather short term focus to maintain efficiently. The asset manager focuses on effective maintenance and reliability in the somewhat longer term.  Both work together in tandem to ensure that the assets deliver the expected results in a sustainable manner.

Multi-combinable?

The question remains whether the above characteristics and objectives can be combined and realised by one person. Is there a super maintenance manager who besides all organizational aspects of maintenance also masters all methodologies and technical specialties of reliability engineering? To succeed in this, one needs the ability to perform several tasks at the same time. Regularly reports appear in the media with studies confirming that women can multitask better than men.  Research by the Russian HSE Neurolinguistics Laboratory recently showed that women are better at this because their brains require less energy. Apparently, fewer brain areas are mobilised when performing multiple tasks at the same time.  However, these results should be qualified: only in very stressful situations where tasks are frequently changed can women benefit from better multitasking. Moreover, another multitasking study shows that only 2.5% of the test persons succeeded in carrying out two tasks properly at the same time. So, whether you are a man or a woman, you are better off not multitasking at all.

Man or woman?

The answer to this question is simple: the ideal maintenance manager is a man or a woman who understands all of the above. He or she succeeds in getting the people in his or her team, depending on their function, to focus clearly on short-term or long-term issues. Only then does an organisation succeed in doing the right things right!

Wim Vancauwenberghe