Much has been written in recent years about the roles and responsibilities of maintenance and reliability (M&R) teams – and rightly so. These teams are essential to sustaining asset performance, managing failure risk, and executing precision repairs. But there’s another critical player in the reliability equation: Operations.
In today’s high-performance facilities, reliability cannot be achieved solely through maintenance. It’s a shared outcome – and operations must play a leadership role in making it happen. When production and maintenance teams work together with clear expectations, mutual accountability, and shared ownership, plant performance transforms.
Shared Leadership: Asset Ownership vs. Capability Ownership
Here’s a foundational truth: Operations leads asset ownership. Maintenance leads asset capability.
Operations teams are responsible for how equipment is used, prioritized, and prepared. Maintenance is responsible for restoring, sustaining, and enhancing its functional performance.
This division doesn’t create silos – it creates structure. When roles are clear and collaboration is strong, the entire plant benefits from more uptime, better planning, fewer surprises, and stronger trust.
The Leadership Role of Operations in Reliability
Operations leadership isn’t just about supporting maintenance – it’s about setting the tone, owning key processes, and ensuring that the environment exists for reliability to thrive.
Champion the Scheduling Process
Operations should lead the weekly scheduling meeting and ensure:
- Critical work is prioritized
- Asset availability is confirmed and communicated
- The frozen weekly schedule is respected and protected, a true partnership agreement
Drive Daily Coordination
Operations participation in daily coordination meetings ensures:
- Alignment between plant production realities and maintenance needs
- Support for job readiness and safe execution
- Visibility into barriers that could disrupt the day’s work
Ensure Assets Are Ready for Work
This is one of the most direct ways operations leadership affects reliability. Ensuring that permits, lockout/tagout (LOTO), and assets are down and ready per the schedule has a direct and measurable impact on craft wrench time.
When assets aren’t ready, time is lost. When operations champions job readiness, schedule adherence and execution quality both improve.
Communicate Early and Often
Operators are closest to the assets. They’re the first to see, hear, or feel when something changes. Encouraging early and frequent communication from the operations team enables:
- Early detection of emerging issues
- Proactive planning rather than reactive firefighting
- Stronger maintenance response based on clearer information
Support High-Quality Work Orders
When a notification or request is submitted, it should include:
- Clear problem description
- Accurate location and equipment tag
- When it was observed and under what conditions
Well-written work orders enable better planning, fewer delays, and higher-quality execution.
Minimize Break-In Work
Operations leaders should help reinforce that not all urgent work is an emergency. Supporting a disciplined approach to break-in work ensures that:
- Emergencies are truly treated as such
- Most work flows through a planned, efficient process
- Schedule discipline improves and firefighting decreases
Identify Bad Actors
Operations leaders and operators often know which assets are the most troublesome – the ones that create repeated disruptions, slowdowns, or unplanned downtime. Their insight is essential to:
- Identifying bad actors and chronic failures
- Prioritizing them for root cause and redesign
- Supporting solutions that may involve changing how the asset is used
Be a Co-Leader of the Reliability Budget
Reliability investments – whether capital improvements, predictive tools, or preventive strategy enhancements – must align with plant priorities. Operations should:
- Participate in annual maintenance and reliability budget planning
- Co-lead capital planning for high-risk assets
- Champion smart spending that reduces future risk
Champion Precision Work
One of the most powerful things an operations leader can do is to set the expectation that maintenance work should be done right – not rushed. That means:
- Giving craftspeople time to align, torque, clean, and test properly
- Recognizing that precision reduces repeat failures
- Supporting a plant culture that values doing it right the first time
Operators: The Frontline Leaders of Reliability
While leadership sets strategy, operators carry it out every shift. Their engagement in daily routines is critical to making reliability real.
Key operator responsibilities include:
- Perform Head-to-Tail Walks
- Communicate Defects Immediately
- Write Clear Work Requests
- Support Job Readiness
- Assist in Safe Recommissioning
- Provide Feedback on Repairs
- Participate in Root Cause
When Operations Leads, Reliability Follows
When operations teams take a leadership role in reliability, the results ripple across the organization:
- Fewer unplanned outages
- Better work execution
- Higher schedule compliance
- Less rework
- Greater trust between teams
And most importantly – a stronger, more reliable plant.
Reliability Thrives When Operations Leads
Reliability is not something maintenance delivers to operations – it’s something built together.
Operations must lead the way: in scheduling, communication, daily readiness, and accountability. Their role is not peripheral – it’s central.
When operations leads reliability as an active, accountable partner, maintenance gains the time, space, and clarity to do the job right.
And when that happens, the facility is “playing to win”.
