Roy Cribb Dissects the Future of Preventative Maintenance

Most maintenance conversations start with tools. Roy Cribb starts with culture. As a maintenance reliability consultant at Process Maintain, with more than 25 years of experience working with companies including Sackers, Origin Fertilisers, and Freeport-McMoRan, Roy has seen what separates plants that run reliably from those that lurch from breakdown to breakdown. His view, shared on the Comparesoft podcast, is that the future of preventative maintenance is not really about predictive sensors or smarter software. It is about whether the people running the plant treat maintenance as a priority in the first place.

In this episode of the Comparesoft Maintenance Management Podcast, Roy covers culture, planning, software, spreadsheets, and the discipline that turns reliability into a competitive advantage. His argument throughout is that no single tool fixes a maintenance problem. The combinations matter more than the components.

What a Maintenance Reliability Consultant Actually Does

Roy’s remit covers reliability, efficiency, and the safety issues that surface alongside both. He works with customers to understand and improve those areas, guides them through the process of upgrading their operations, and identifies safety problems that emerge along the way.

“Essentially what I do is I work with customers to understand and improve [reliability] and efficiency,” Roy explains. “And help them with any project that comes off back-to-back directly or indirectly. I also guide them through the process of improving their processes, which usually has a physical or mechanical element to that. And the third part is to identify any safety issues that need addressing as we go through this process of improving reliability and efficiency.”

That last point is not an afterthought. Roy treats safety and maintenance as two sides of the same problem, not parallel disciplines that occasionally meet.
“Safety goes hand-in-hand with maintenance,” he says, “and we usually tend to find that if something is poorly maintained, there’s a good chance it’s also going to be unsafe. So there’s a strong link to safety there.”

How to Build a Preventative Maintenance Culture That Sticks

A preventative maintenance culture starts in the boardroom, not on the plant floor. Asked how to set a good maintenance culture, Roy does not start with KPIs or scheduling software. He starts with how seriously the leadership treats the function.

“I think that within a company for the people involved at any level, from the engineers to the CEO to the accountants, good maintenance culture requires an understanding of maintenance,” he says. “And for [it] to be placed as high a priority as safety, then that’s that company’s culture.”

The framing is deliberate. In most organisations, safety has non-negotiable status. Maintenance, by contrast, is often treated as overhead.

“Maintenance for me should be accepted and embraced and not seen as a necessary evil,” Roy continues. “If you can get those elements right, the culture will begin.”

How to Plan Preventative Maintenance Activities That Hold Up

Preventative maintenance plans hold up when they are built on three layers, not one. The headline rule is simple, but underneath it sits a more demanding set of requirements that determine whether the plan survives contact with the plant floor.

“At the high level, it’s quite simple,” Roy says. “Maintenance should be based on manufacturers’ requirements and essentially planned to occur outside of the operations window. That’s the high level. But there’s a deeper understanding, [more] levels to go below that.”

That deeper layer is where most plans fall down. Roy argues that you cannot plan well without understanding the assets themselves. A generic schedule applied to specific machines almost always misses.

“You need to understand component life cycles and the maintenance needs by understanding the machine itself,” he explains. “All machines and processes have their own individual characteristics that you need to understand.”

The third element is timing, which is increasingly where preventive maintenance software earns its keep.

“You also need to use preventative maintenance to monitor conditions and predictive data to get the timing right,” Roy says. “The last thing you want to do is over-maintain. It’s a waste of resources.”

How to Implement an Effective Preventative Maintenance Plan

A preventative maintenance plan only works if the people responsible for it have agreed to it. Roy is direct about why so many programmes drift after launch.

“To implement anything, it needs to be accepted and agreed by anyone in that accountability chain,” he says. “I like to ask questions to understand how committed these people are, and it’s only when you get that commitment that you can implement the maintenance plan or strategy that doesn’t create friction that’s going to slow things down.”

The lesson is subtle. Resistance does not always announce itself. It often shows up as quiet non-cooperation that erodes the plan over months.

Where Software Fits in Preventative Maintenance, and Where It Does Not

Software has a place in preventative maintenance, but not as the overall factor. Roy’s view is balanced rather than evangelical. He has used a range of systems and seen the value, but he is careful not to overstate it.

“Yeah, absolutely [software tools are useful],” he says. “But importantly, they need to work alongside more traditional maintenance management tools. There’s such a wide range of abilities and experience across [the] industry.”

That diversity matters. Plants are full of people who learn and work in very different ways, and Roy is not interested in pretending otherwise.

“Software needs to be an important part of [maintenance], but not the overall factor. We all know that people work and learn in different ways and some of those ways don’t include software tools. We just need to accept that. But I have had experience with various software tools to understand the value they give me.”

For maintenance leaders weighing up a Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS), this is a useful frame. The software is part of the solution. It is not the solution.

How Connected Technologies Are Changing Preventative Maintenance

Connected technologies are changing preventative maintenance by sharpening what already exists rather than replacing it. Roy’s answer to the question the episode is built around is grounded rather than futuristic.

“It’s certainly going to improve the focus on reliability-centred maintenance, especially around predictive maintenance and how to reduce things such as interval timing between components running outside of their normal conditions, leading to a fail state, leading to action,” he says.

Translated, the change is about closing the gap between detection and action. The tighter that interval, the lower the risk of a failure becoming a stoppage. Tools that fall under the predictive maintenance umbrella are central to that shift.

“I think technologies are going to help to reduce that interval time, and quite drastically in the future,” Roy says. “So I think it’s going to take a while, yeah, I think [it’s] going to have a positive impact.”

Where Spreadsheets Still Earn Their Place in Preventative Maintenance

Spreadsheets still earn their place in preventative maintenance because managers have very little time, and the data they need is not always granular. Despite his comfort with technology, Roy makes a clear case for the humble Excel spreadsheet.

“I’ve been lucky enough to have been taught the value of simple Excel spreadsheets that you can extract data from by some great mentors,” he says. “The key is to keep things simple, because the guys that I help, you know, the managers, the ops managers, the maintenance managers, they’re extremely busy people, and they just need simple, effective data.”

The point is not that spreadsheets replace software. It is that they translate software output into something busy operators can act on quickly.

“You can use the data from the technology and the software we’ve just talked about, put it into a spreadsheet, and extract real data from that,” Roy explains. “One of the key things of what I like to do is to guide my customers in the direction of either beginning to or improving how they quantify the performance of their plant machinery.”

That quantification has a downstream value that Roy thinks is often missed. Numbers are what unlock budget conversations.

“When we’ve got the value of that, it helps us to correlate it, and more importantly, we can report on and justify those events to help us with expenditure,” he says. “If we need to be able to spend half a million pounds on new equipment, [we] want the data to back that up.”

What to Do Before You Buy a New Preventative Maintenance System

Before you buy a new preventative maintenance system, start with the data, not the vendor. Roy’s advice for anyone evaluating a new CMMS comes back to a single question: do you know what good looks like before you go to market?

“My advice would be to first understand what data you require,” he says. “If you can understand what you need, you can then go to market and research the product that gives you the information you need.”

This is the failure mode he sees most often. Organisations buy a system before they have defined what good looks like, then end up using a fraction of its capability. The implementation steps that protect a CMMS rollout tend to start at the same place Roy points to.

“Quite often what will happen is the new system will be bought by the organisation and it really won’t understand its capacity, take advantage of its capacity, but at a very simple level, it won’t get the information it needs,” Roy explains.

His final word on this is a useful corrective for anyone tempted to chase complexity. Sophisticated systems are not the same as useful ones.

“Don’t forget, we don’t always need the granular data. We quite often just need simple numbers in order to strategise and report out. So my advice would be to understand what you need first before you go to find out what you then want to buy.”

Why Preventative Maintenance Becomes a Competitive Advantage

Preventative maintenance becomes a competitive advantage when reliability and efficiency unlock planning, forecasting, and strategy at the commercial level. Roy treats this not as a question, but as an operating principle that drives the rest of his work.

“For me, that’s more of a statement than a question,” he says. “And it runs quite deeply for everything that I do. If your process or your machine for you is reliable and efficient, it helps you to do a few things. You can plan, you can forecast with a degree of accuracy, and you can strategise. If you are successful in those three elements, then you are going to be as competitive as your capacity will allow.”

Reliability, in this view, is not a maintenance KPI. It is a commercial one.

Roy’s Three Tips for Effective Preventative Maintenance

Roy’s three tips for effective preventative maintenance are short and pointed.

The first is continuous review. “You need to continuously review your plan, because things change,” he says. “So reviewing the plan.”

The second is combining data with experience. “No one thing can work on its own,” Roy explains. “You need collaboration between different systems.”

The third is the one most likely to provoke pushback in a budget meeting, but Roy does not soften it. “Always strive to install and use the best quality components,” he says. “There’s no such thing as cheap when it comes to maintenance.”

Full Transcript

Matt (Host): Hi everyone, welcome back to the Comparesoft podcast. It’s great to have you
here. As always, our guest this week is Roy [Cribb]. Roy is a maintenance reliability consultant at Process Maintain. And Roy has worked with companies like Sackers, Origin Fertilizers, Freeport-McMoRan, and currently is with his own company Process Maintain.

Roy has over 25 years in understanding asset maintenance and care. So it would be really interesting to hear his take on maintenance management.

Welcome to the show, Roy. How is it going, sir?

Roy Cribb: Thank you very much. Yeah, I’m very well, thank you. How are you?

Matt: I’m good, thanks and it’s great to have you on the show. Thanks so much for coming on. We really appreciate having you here and dropping some knowledge for the listeners. So let’s head straight in then. Can you tell our listeners a little bit more about what you do?

Roy: Essentially what I do is I work with customers to understand and improve ability and efficiency their. And help them with any project that comes off back-to-back directly or indirectly.

I also guide them through the process of improving their processes, which usually has a physical or mechanic element to that. And the third part is to identify any safety issues that need addressing as we go through this process of improving reliability and efficiency.

Safety goes hand-in-hand [with maintenance], and we usually tend to find that if something is poorly maintained, there’s a good chance it’s also going to be unsafe. So, there’s a strong link to safety there.

Matt: Okay, awesome. Well, how would you go about setting a good maintenance culture?

Roy: I think that within a company for the people involved at any level, from the engineers to the CEO to the accountants, good maintenance culture requires [an] understanding of maintenance.

And for to be as placed as high as priority, as safety, then that’s that company’s culture. Maintenance for me should be accepted and embraced and not seen as a necessary evil. If you can get those elements right, the culture will begin.

Matt: How would you recommend to plan maintenance activities?

Roy: So, it’s an interesting question and for me, you need to bring a few things together to plan efficiently and effectively. At the high level, it’s quite simple. Maintenance should be based on manufacturers’ requirements and essentially plans to occur outside of the operations window that’s the high level. But there’s a deeper understanding, these levels to go below that.

You need to understand component life cycles and the maintenance needs by understanding [the] machine itself. And all machines and processes have their own individual characteristics that you need to understand.

You also need to use preventative maintenance to monitor conditions and predictive data to get the timing right. The last thing you want to do is over-maintain – it’s a waste of resources. So there’s a few things you have to bring together to plan maintenance activities.

Matt: Had do you recommend to implement an effective maintenance plan? How do you implement an effective maintenance plan?

Roy: To implement anything it needs to be accepted and agreed by anyone in that accountability chain. I like to ask questions to understand how committed these people are and it’s only when you get that commitment that you can implement the maintenance plan or strategy that doesn’t create friction that’s going to slow things down.

Matt: And so, moving on to the tools of the trade. Do you think software tools are useful for managing maintenance activities?

Roy: Yeah, absolutely. But, importantly, they need to work alongside more traditional maintenance management tools. There’s such a wide range of abilities and experience across [the] industry.

Software needs to be an important part of [maintenance], but not the overall factor. We all know that people work and learn in different ways and some of those ways don’t include software tools, we just need to accept that. But I have had experience with various software tools to understand the value they give me.

I’ve used really interesting real-time information tag systems. I’ve had exposure to SAP and more hardcore maintenance management software like limbo. So, I’ve seen and understood the value of them, but it’s part of the solution. It’s not the entire solution.

Matt: Right. And talking about solutions and being part of the solution, how do you see connected technologies changing the way we work in the future?

Roy: Well, it’s – you know, it’s certainly going to improve the focus on reliability-centred maintenance, especially around predictive maintenance and how to reduce things such as interval timing between components running outside of their normal conditions, leading to a fail state, leading to action.

You know, I think technologies are going to help to reduce that interval time and quite drastically in the future. So, I think it’s going to take a while, yeah, I think [it’s] going to have a positive impact.

Matt: Going a bit more old school and traditional, which I’m sure a lot of people still like to work as – what’s your take on using spreadsheets for maintenance management? Do they still have a place?

Roy: Well, you know, I’ve been lucky enough to have been taught the value of simple Excel spreadsheets, that you can extract data from by some great mentors and I’ve been really lucky and we’ve talked about some great people.

The key is to keep things simple because the guys that I help, you know, the managers, the ops managers, the mains managers, they’re extremely busy people and they just need simple, effective data. And you can use the data from the technology, and the software we’ve just talked about, put it into a spreadsheet and extract real data from that.

One of the key things of what I like to do is to guide my customers in the direction of either beginning to or improving how they quantify the performance of their plant machinery. And when we’ve got that data, even from a software tool such as pie or a simple stop clock, putting numbers onto a spreadsheet and putting it into Excel.

When we’ve got the value of that, it helps us to correlate it and more importantly, we can report on and justify those events to help us with expenditure. You know, if we need to be able to spend half a million pounds on new equipment, [we] want the data to back that [up].

Matt: What advice would you give to people who are just starting to look into implementing a new CMMS Software or grading digitally?

Roy: Okay. Yeah, great question. I think my advice would be to first understand what data you require. If you can understand what you need, you can then go to market and research the product that gives you the information you need.

You know, quite often what will happen is the new system will be bought by the organisation and it really won’t understand its capacity, take advantage of its capacity, but at a very simple level, it won’t get the information it needs.

Don’t forget, we don’t always need, you know, the granular data. We quite often just need simple numbers in order to strategise and report out. So, my advice would be, to understand what you need first before you go to find out what you then want to buy.

Matt: Sure. And then – so how would you use maintenance as a competitive advantage for the business?

Roy: So for me, that’s more of a statement than a question. And it runs quite deeply for everything that I do. For me it’s a statement, it’s a simple statement. If your process or your machine, for you, is reliable and efficient, it helps you to do a few things.

You can plan, you can forecast with a degree of accuracy and you can strategise. If you are successful in those three elements, then you are going to be as competitive as your capacity will allow. Does that make sense? That’s kind of how I talk to my customers, how I justify what I do.

Matt: Well you’ve dropped some really fantastic tips and knowledge for us already, Roy, and as I said in the beginning, we really appreciate having you on the show. But what would your top three tips be for our listeners on effective maintenance? Top three tips.

Roy: Not in any real order but these three things need to be at the forefront of what you do. The individual, whoever it is, you need to continuously review your plan because things change. So reviewing the plan.

The other thing is about combining data with experience. No one thing can work on its own. You need collaboration between different systems and this is the obvious one.

For the maintenance managers out there, I’m sure they can agree. Always strive to install and use the best quality components. There’s no such thing as cheap when it comes to maintenance.

Matt: Right. Wow. There you go. Amazing tips there very concise and to the point. I like it. So, wrapping this up then, what’s your favourite saying or quote on maintenance for our listeners?

Roy: Yeah, that’s a great question. I suppose the thing that I’ve always said, the thing that I’ve always preached is quite simply – if you don’t look after the machine, it won’t look after you. And that’s it. It’s very simple.

You know, it’s anything from a bicycle to a car to a 5 million pound processing machine. If you don’t look after it, if you don’t maintain it, then it won’t look after the business.

Matt: Sure. Well, hey, I mean Roy, you’ve been a fantastic guest and thanks so much for being on the show and, thanks to everybody for being here with us again. We really appreciate it and we’ll see you on the next episode. Thanks so much. Cheers.

Roy: Thank you very much.