There is a problem with the notion of Lean Maintenance. The problem is that, if you follow Lean Maintenance through to its logical conclusion, Lean Maintenance really means no maintenance. Or rather, it means no need for maintenance. It means a factory with equipment that doesn't need to be maintained. Wouldn't that be the Leanest Maintenance of all? If we could build a manufacturing process that would reliably make a product that didn't require any maintenance, wouldn't that be interesting to top management?

After all, maintenance itself (unless you do some interesting manipulations with semantics and logic) does not directly add value to a product. This value adding proposition is part of the definition of lean maintenance. So, we have a little bit of a dilemma.

The solution to this dilemma is that as yet there are no truly maintenance-free factories. Until there are, we have to make maintenance lean. When there are maintenance-free designs, we will have to reconsider this position. So, on the way to having maintenance-free systems, you can take on the fat in maintenance.

Some of you may watch Star Trek (one of my favorite series that I think has captured many issues of maintenance management over time). I tell people that if you ever want to know something about maintenance, just watch Star Trek and see how maintenance issues are treated. Everything you need to know about maintenance has been in a Star Trek episode.

In the first Star Trek