Practices: Lean Maintenance can be thought of as a set of practices and attitudes toward maintenance. These practices (like never sending someone to repair something without a plan, bill of material, and tool list) are like exercising, eating right, or self improvement. The improvement from the practice comes from its application over a long period of time. The good Lean Maintenance practices will carry you along, with gradual improvements over several years.

Attitude: Having the right attitude is related to practices. We are trying to produce our product or service with the least input possible because it makes sense from a profit motive and because it is the right thing to do for our environment and for our world. Like someone exercising, even if your attitude flags (I don't want to exercise today), the habit of the practice will carry you over (you don't have to like it just do it!)

Technology: Breakthroughs in technology can happen at any time. Innovation is either continuous (incremental improvement) or discontinuous (giant leap in improvement involving shift to new approaches). Maintenance professionals who want Lean Maintenance will have to be in a constant search for new technology. The key to using technology is to wait for others (who like living on the bleeding edge of technology) to do the initial "beta" testing and to have a program in place to try some of the successes. Testing new technology in a scientific way...