Lean Maintenance Kaizen Improvement Training Course

Course overview

Maintenance teams are often judged by uptime, response time and cost, yet spend large portions of each shift waiting for permits, parts, access, instructions or production release. Repeated breakdowns can be treated as isolated events while chronic losses remain hidden in work-order data. This Lean Maintenance Kaizen Improvement Training Course gives maintenance and engineering professionals a structured way to expose waste in preventive, corrective and shutdown work, stabilise repeatable tasks, and improve equipment availability without relying on headcount increases or indiscriminate maintenance spending.

Participants learn to apply Lean principles directly to maintenance operations: define value from the production customer’s perspective, map the maintenance value stream, classify the eight wastes, analyse failure and delay data, and distinguish planned work from reactive work. The course covers maintenance 5S, visual management, standard work, kitting, kanban replenishment, quick-change thinking, daily management and kaizen event design. Participants also use Pareto analysis, 5 Whys, fishbone diagrams and A3 problem solving to connect recurring equipment losses with practical countermeasures.

Instruction combines concise technical input with plant-based scenarios, work-order datasets, team simulations and facilitated improvement workshops. Participants practise measuring wrench time, identifying process bottlenecks, designing a future-state maintenance workflow and building controls that sustain gains after the event. Each participant leaves with a completed Lean Maintenance Kaizen A3 package: current-state map, quantified loss analysis, future-state actions, ownership matrix, measures and a 90-day implementation plan suitable for review with a maintenance manager or operations sponsor.

The programme is designed for experienced maintenance, reliability and engineering personnel who already understand the realities of asset-intensive operations and need a disciplined improvement method that can be used across workshops, utilities, facilities, process plants and production lines.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Map a maintenance value stream from work request to equipment handback using current-state and future-state mapping
• Calculate planned-versus-reactive work ratios, wrench time, backlog age and maintenance process lead time from work-order data
• Identify the eight Lean wastes in maintenance planning, stores, access, permits, execution and closeout activities
• Apply 5S and visual management standards to improve tool control, spare-part location and workshop readiness
• Design standard work instructions and job plans that reduce variation in recurring maintenance tasks
• Build a kanban-based replenishment method for high-use maintenance consumables and approved spare parts
• Conduct root-cause analysis using Pareto charts, 5 Whys, fishbone diagrams and an A3 problem-solving format
• Produce a 90-day Lean Maintenance Kaizen implementation plan with owners, measures, review cadence and escalation points

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Maintenance Managers — who need to reduce reactive work and improve labour productivity without compromising asset care
• Reliability Engineers — who must convert recurring failure evidence into sustainable process and equipment improvements
• Maintenance Planners and Schedulers — who need to remove delays from planning, kitting, scheduling and work-order closeout
• Engineering Managers — who oversee maintenance systems, shutdown performance and capital asset availability
• Operations Supervisors — who coordinate equipment access and need more reliable handoffs with maintenance teams
• Maintenance Supervisors and Team Leaders — who lead technicians and must embed standard work, visual controls and daily improvement

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical experience in a maintenance, reliability, engineering or operations role and be familiar with their organisation’s work-order process, preventive maintenance routines and basic equipment downtime measures. The course assumes comfort reading simple work-order reports and using spreadsheets for sorting, filtering and basic calculations. Prior exposure to Lean, Kaizen, root-cause analysis or a CMMS is helpful but not required; the methods are taught from first principles and applied to maintenance examples. No advanced statistics, programming, formal Lean certification or specialist software licence is required.

Training methodology

The five days use instructor-led demonstrations, maintenance-workflow case studies and structured team workshops. Participants work with sample CMMS extracts to calculate maintenance losses, map a request-to-closeout process and prioritise improvement opportunities. Small groups run simulated gemba observations, 5S audits, root-cause investigations and kanban design exercises for a maintenance storeroom and workshop. Daily debriefs connect each method to participants’ own sites. On the final day, each participant converts their selected issue into a reviewed A3 and 90-day implementation plan.

Course outline

Day 1: Lean Maintenance foundations and loss visibility

• Lean value defined from the production and asset-user perspective
• The maintenance work cycle from notification to closeout
• The eight wastes in maintenance and engineering support processes
• Planned, unplanned, proactive and reactive maintenance work categories
• Maintenance process lead time, touch time and wrench time
• Work-order data quality and practical loss measurement
• Current-state maintenance value-stream mapping

Workshop: Participants map a breakdown-repair workflow from work request to handback and quantify waiting, handoffs and non-value-added activity.

Day 2: Workplace flow, 5S and visual maintenance control

• Maintenance workshop 5S audit criteria and red-tagging
• Point-of-use storage for tools, consumables and common spare parts
• Visual controls for tool status, job readiness and equipment isolation
• Technician travel and search-time reduction methods
• Maintenance job kitting and pre-job staging
• Standard work for recurring inspection and repair tasks
• Daily management boards for maintenance performance

Workshop: Teams complete a 5S and visual-management redesign for a simulated workshop area and produce a control-board layout with ownership rules.

Day 3: Material flow and maintenance planning improvement

• Maintenance planning quality and job-plan content
• Backlog segmentation by priority, readiness and age
• Weekly scheduling interfaces between operations and maintenance
• Kanban principles for maintenance consumables
• Min-max settings and reorder triggers for approved spare parts
• Stores-to-workshop material flow and kitting routes
• Constraint removal for permits, access, drawings and contractor support

Workshop: Participants redesign the planning-and-kitting process for a weekly maintenance schedule and create a kanban replenishment card set for selected items.

Day 4: Root cause, A3 thinking and Kaizen event execution

• Pareto analysis of downtime, repeat work and maintenance delays
• Problem statements that separate symptoms from measurable conditions
• 5 Whys questioning for process and technical causes
• Fishbone analysis across people, methods, materials, machines and environment
• A3 problem-solving structure and evidence requirements
• Kaizen event charter, scope, roles and gemba plan
• Countermeasure testing, risk review and standardisation

Workshop: Teams investigate a repeat-failure case using Pareto, fishbone and 5 Whys analysis, then draft an A3 countermeasure proposal.

Day 5: Future-state design and sustainment planning

• Future-state maintenance value-stream design
• Performance measures for planned work, wrench time and schedule compliance
• Visual daily accountability and tiered escalation routines
• Standard-work confirmation and layered process audits
• Control plans for 5S, kanban and job-plan adherence
• Benefit estimation and Kaizen action prioritisation
• Ninety-day implementation roadmap and sponsor communication

Workshop: Each participant completes and presents a Lean Maintenance Kaizen A3 package with a future-state map, action register, measures and 90-day rollout plan.

Tools & standards covered

IBM Maximo, SAP S/4HANA Asset Management, Microsoft Excel, ISO 55000

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions