MaintainX

Maintenance veterans don't get enough credit for keeping machines running decades after they were overdue for an upgrade. Unfortunately, this type of experience is leaving fast, and #manufactures are not ready! I remember my first job in high school, working as a shop hand and doing maintenance work for a manufacturer, with awesome mentors teaching me what to do. However, today, most of them are retired, and pretty much every company is in the same boat. So what do we need to focus on? MaintainX recently dropped a new article on 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐌𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐍𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔, and it had some great takeaways: 🧰 Make knowledge capture a priority for your skilled workers. 🧰 Reframe maintenance as a competitive differentiator. 🧰 Turn machine signals into maintenance work, and maintenance work into operational insight. If you want to read the full write-up, check out the link below from Kim Jakubowski! https://lnkd.in/ggXvJ6D8 #TheManufacturingMillennial #MaintainXPartner #Maintenance #Training

Here’s a number that should get the attention of anyone serious about reshoring U.S. manufacturing: Many U.S. factories are operating at just 70–80% of capacity—not because demand isn’t there, but because they struggle to keep equipment running and skilled teams fully staffed. We spend a lot of time talking about labor costs, offshoring, incentives, and industrial policy. But one of the biggest constraints to reshoring is already sitting on the factory floor: reliability. Poor maintenance can erode productivity by up to 20%. Unplanned downtime costs businesses an estimated $50 billion annually. And 79% of manufacturers failed to reduce downtime in the past year. The technology exists. The data exists. The real challenge is execution. In my latest piece for Fast Company, I explore what manufacturers can do now to turn reliability into a competitive advantage: • Work smarter with preventive strategies and digital tools that can significantly improve productivity • Capture institutional knowledge before experienced technicians leave the workforce • Embed AI directly into frontline workflows, grounded in real equipment data and failure history • Build manufacturing environments that attract and empower the next generation of workers Reshoring won’t be won by policy alone. It will also be won—or lost—through thousands of operational decisions being made every day on factory floors. Reliability isn’t just a maintenance issue. It’s a growth strategy. Read the full piece in Fast Company: https://lnkd.in/eg5nW3QX

If you want to see where AI is actually changing operations, don’t look at the keynote-stage demos. Look at a growing car wash chain based in Colorado. For a long time, maintenance software was a digital filing cabinet. Log what broke. Note who fixed it. File it for the auditor. That framing isn’t wrong. It’s just incomplete. A filing cabinet records the past. It doesn’t help anyone do the next job better. The Autowash story in Fortune yesterday is what happens when the system answers back. A tech walks up to a bay, gets a summary of the likely issue, the right part to pull, and how a colleague at another site fixed the same problem last week. Repair times down 74%. New techs productive in weeks instead of months. What I keep thinking about is the shape of the operation underneath. 26 locations, 150 bays, no longer running like 26 separate businesses. The judgment of the most experienced tech on the team becomes available to everyone, everywhere, the moment they need it. I spent time with Erin in person recently. The maintenance overhaul is the entry point, not the whole story. She’s rebuilding every layer of the operation, and what they’ve been teasing on automation and innovation is the part of this story most operators in the category aren’t ready for. In the piece, she put it plainly: software like this isn’t a solution. It’s a new way of thinking. You can’t turn it on and expect it to work for you. You have to integrate it into how the work actually gets done. Thanks to Erin and the Autowash team, and to Sage Lazzaro at Fortune for telling the story. https://lnkd.in/e74F--6m

Maintenance is often overlooked and sidelined when making business decisions in #manufacturing. So how can companies leverage tools and technology like #AI to future-proof their operations? The first thing to look at is #AI is no longer this "new idea". Last year, a survey done by MaintainX showed that 44% of their respondents already have implemented some sort of AI, and in 2026, that number is expected to reach 65%. If you want to read the full report that talks about 6 AI challenges and how to overcome them around topics like data, trust, implementation, and more. I'll have details in the comments below! Check out this article from Plant Services covering #MaintainX! #TheManufacturingMillennail #MaintainXPartner #Manufacturing #Automation

Companies often underestimate the impact of downtime and the importance of 𝐠𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐬. So what tools should companies be using in 2026? Are things getting better? The reality… downtime is worse than ever. It's 36% more expensive, and labor shortages and skills gaps continue to slow progress, with 36% of downtime tied directly to workforce challenges. A report just released by MaintainX shows how companies are trying to combat this and how AI is already being deployed in manufacturing facilities to solve these problems. Some insights I found were: ✨ 58% of teams are already using AI. ✨ 75% are seeing ROI in under 6 months. ✨ 34% improvement on data-driven decisions. If you want to dig deeper into the data and see feedback from 2,234 maintenance and operations leaders across North America, check out the 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 from MaintainX here: https://lnkd.in/dxFnEU37 #TheManufacturingMillennial #MaintainXPartner #manufacturing #maintenance #AI #automation #digitaltransformation

Trigger work orders automatically when your equipment shows early signs of trouble.