Business is not the same.  Caution is everywhere.  It's more important than ever to be cost effective and productive.  You can't afford production glitches and excessive downtime.  But what you doing to ensure you don't fall back into old habits.  Or worse - what if you've laid off maintenance staff and can't (or won't) get them all back.  You will be trying to do at least as much as before and with fewer people.  Chances are that they were stretched beyond reason before the recession.  The "Lean" manufacturing efforts by many companies were poorly executed - they resulted in lean workforces (anorexic as one colleague calls them) and no other changes.  Trying to do more with fewer people, companies suffered.  Productivity was down, costs were up.  Businesses were vulnerable to recessionary pressures.

Now it's imperative to change.  If you were struggling to be "lean" before the recession, what's happening now?  What changes have you made?  Are you ready to compete on a stronger footing or are you even more weak than before? 

Before long companies will be humming along again.  But production facilities will (in many cases) be hard pressed to meet demands.  They've done little to change so they'll continue to get the same old results using the same old methods. 

It's time to look at something new.  Take bold steps to improve productivity.  One of those steps is to improve production capacity.  Get that capacity you were struggling with before.  Improve reliability - it's the Achilles Heal of lean.  Maintenance, materials and engineering management efforts are needed to work together to really position your production capability and capacity where you want it.  You can't solve the old problems with the old thinking.  Try something new!