Care of your health is a form of maintenance. You are sustaining an existing state of health. Maintenance is all about sustaining an existing state: in the case of your body, your mind, your spirit and emotions, the ability of those aspects of yourself to provide you with a meaningful, happy existence. If you are changing the state of health you are either improving it, or worsening it. Some choices we make can worsen our health - using harmful substances, driving carelessly, engaging in risky sex, overeating, smoking, etc. Some choices we make can improve our health - exercise regularly, eat organic (uncontaminated) foods, supplement our diets, take vitamins, engage in safe sex, drive carefully, don't smoke, etc. These are all choices we make at a personal level.
Maintenance of our physical assets is like that too. We choose at a personal and organizational level to either improve or worsen our physical assets' state of health. We can choose to execute work orders as intended, or not. We can choose to do predictive and preventive maintenance, or not. We can choose to test dormant and safety systems, or not. Some choices are healthy and some of not.
Organizations that react to failures rather than prevent them suffer more serious consequences of those failures. We all know that unplanned, unscheduled repair work is far more expensive than planned and scheduled preventive work. Our business suffers if we make unhealthy choices.
The state of our businesses and the choices we make are reflective of the choices we make personally. If we choose dis-ease on a personal level we are likely to choose dis-ease at our work. Look around you. Are your co-workers healthy choosers or unhealthy choosers? Then look at the state of the physical assets you maintain and rely upon for your livelihood. Are they "healthy" or "unhealthy"? You'll see what I mean.
Canada is reflecting the dis-ease and unhealthy choices of its people. Our parliament is sick, our political representatives do not represent us, they represent special interest groups, lobby's and industrial concerns that do not have the best interests of all Canadians at heart. Evidence of this is seen in Bill C-51 - an act to regulate non-pharmceutical health care products. We're talking about things like garlic, echinacea, vitamins, dietary supplements, natural products that help us MAINTAIN our health. It includes provisions that limit Canadians' rights as free citizens. It moves Canada towards dis-ease and mediocrity. If you are a Canadian reading this I strongly urge you to learn about C-51 and take action against it. Act quickly - it's being rushed through parliament right now and it is deeply flawed. It is unnecessary legislation. A harmful choice for our personal health and our collective health as a country.
You are asset management specialists if you are reading this blog. I'm sure you understand what I'm talking about here. Please educate yourself on this one thing and speak up for doing the "right thing" for yourself.
Here's a link to my personal blog to learn more: http://aworldwithoutenemies.blogspot.com/
If you choose to act please write (soon) to your local MP, our Minister of Health (Tony Clement) and our Prime Minister (Stephen Harper). Their mailing address is: name, House of Commons, Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6. No postage is required for letters to parliament in Canada.
