While deploying SAP PM anywhere in the world involves challenges, most notably the high cost of implementation and ongoing support and the usability of the system for plant workers, these challenges become especially acute in China.

While maintenance and facility management expenditures tend to be considered low in China (cheap labor, locally-made spare parts, cut-throat competition between contractors), studies and experience show that companies’ top executives still focus on reducing them. Outsourcing decisions are, for example, usually motivated by an immediate reduction in maintenance spending.

Companies trying to implement TPM in China, usually as a part of a corporate roll-out, face specific challenges, which may differ from those observed in Japan or in the West, more developed economies where those initiatives, or the consultants involved, often originate from.

Ten years in the Chinese industrial maintenance market have led Bruno Lhopiteau to observe that most MNCs face the same maintenance issues – and most try to apply standard western solutions.

Experience has shown that the earlier reliability and maintainability are taken into account in a construction project, the better. These should be specifically addressed from the design stage of a project, as illustrated below.Experience has shown that the earlier reliability and maintainability are taken into account in a construction project, the better.

More often than not, in Chinese plants, the maintenance workshop is a disappointing sight. A place where maintenance workers seldom enter – and who would blame them?