Pro Tip: Maintenance serves everyone in the company so take a customer service first approach to improve productivity and morale at your bakery.

The responsibility of the bakery maintenance function is often misunderstood, even by those operating directly inside the department.

If not properly checked, maintenance team members might be under the impression that the bakery cannot run without them. This may lead to an arrogant attitude in how they deal with emergency situations on the production floor. This approach affects their response to issues, the quality of repairs, and poor collaboration and communication with production and quality leaders, and other departments that depend on them.

How might the maintenance department be depended upon? It’s similar to how a person might depend on someone to fix their air conditioner on a sweltering summer day or pick up their trash from the curb.

A maintenance department is a service organization within a business and its customer list includes the production department, quality department, shipping and warehouse, and even the finance group.

They are like many of the service providers that can be found supporting the maintenance department. Contractors that supply technicians such as plumbers, HVAC, boiler and floor repair groups are service organizations to the maintenance department in the bakery. The maintenance team has lofty expectations for the level of service that they expect from these organizations.

If the maintenance team is not satisfied with the service provided by their contractor, the chief engineer is the first one to let them know about it. When jobs do not deliver as expected, demands to get the work right and threats to hold payment are easy places to go when one is expecting good service and great communication.

Sometimes this can lead to threats to fire contractors and even disqualify them from future work. So why is it so hard for maintenance teams to accept that they are a service provider and that the expectations thrown on them are much like what they expect delivered to them from their own providers?

Because everyone in the bakery gets their paycheck from the same account no matter where they work in the business, there is no distinct mindset that establishes the line between service provider and customer.

There is a simple principle that can straighten this out. It is referred to as the internal customer principle. The definition states that anyone within a company that expects support and service from you is your internal customer. In the case of a department that maintains bakery equipment, building elements and the grounds, everyone is their customer.

When the internal customer principle is embraced by a bakery maintenance team, the benefits are immense. This leads to a constructive work environment where collaboration and communication lead the day and arrogance takes a back seat.

When practiced, this principle delivers improved productivity, better prioritization and will completely change the morale of the company. Because of the ability to work closer together, make improved decisions and set better priorities, the financial results of the company will improve, too. Everyone benefits from that.

You cannot expect an arrogant maintenance team to figure this out on their own. Company leaders need to find their way to embracing the principle and then making it an expectation across the business and practiced without fail.

If you were to analyze a baking company with strong financials, high productivity and top product quality, you will find a customer service first environment throughout.

Jeff Dearduff is owner of JED Manufacturing Services who provides “Bakery Guy Tips” to those everyday people working in production, maintenance and engineering. Connect with him on LinkedIn.