Maintenance landscape mapped in new report from RS and IMechE

The findings come from the ‘Industry in Motion 2023 Maintenance Engineering Report’ from RS, which is based on findings from a survey of over 1,200 IMechE members.

The report, delivered in conjunction with the IMechE and focused on the responses of almost 700 people in the UK and Ireland, covers monitoring maintenance engineering, skills, the true cost of breakdowns, raising performance through stakeholder collaboration, and harnessing technology to improve efficiency.

The top three challenges respondents cited as expecting to affect them over the next 12 months were attracting talent (47 per cent), inflation and higher costs (47 per cent), and supply chain disruption (40 per cent). The report looks also at the drivers of unscheduled downtime and its cost to a business.

Ageing assets and mechanical failures are the biggest drivers of unscheduled downtime. The report also revealed:

To decrease unscheduled downtime, respondents cited upgrading equipment (48 per cent) and widening monitoring capabilities (46 per cent) as key priorities. To further tackle the issue, planned maintenance has emerged as the number one company strategy in place, deemed the highest priority by 53 per cent of respondents.