Anyone else dealing with operators calling maintenance for EVERYTHING?
Heyy........
I worked as an automotive technician for almost 14 years, then spent some time as a setup technician, and for the last 2 years I’ve been working in maintenance in the electronics industry.
My work is mostly mechanical, with little to no electrical work since that requires separate qualifications where I live.
For context, responsibilities at our plant are roughly:
- Maintenance: repairs, troubleshooting, preventive maintenance and more
- Setup techs: machine setups/changeovers, adjustments, small repairs, loading machines
- Operators: loading machines and basic changeovers, cleaning
What annoys me is how many setup techs treat maintenance like a joker card for every little issue.
We get called for problems where it’s obvious nobody even looked first. Sometimes the issue is so simple you wonder how people function day to day. A lot of setup techs also seem to have very little technical understanding.
What frustrates me most is that some people spend years in the same role without really improving or learning from experience. Some have been there longer than me, yet still struggle with basic issues and show no real initiative to troubleshoot or understand the machines they work with every day.
I know part of that is the company’s fault because of poor hiring and training.
And to be clear: I don’t mind real maintenance calls. That’s our job.
What bothers me is when basic troubleshooting is skipped completely before calling us. Because of that, I started asking for official support requests by email in certain situations. A lot of setup techs get annoyed by that or avoid doing it completely - likely because they don’t want it documented when it’s something very simple.
Another frustrating part is that setup techs here make almost as much as maintenance, while maintenance is expected to understand and troubleshoot nearly every machine and system in the plant.
Do you guys experience similar things in manufacturing/maintenance?
How do you deal with it without becoming completely frustrated?