Engineering is a part of maintenance

This is unfortunately not true in most organisations from a pure organisational structure, as well as a functional cooperation perspective. Engineering is a standalone function, responsible for ‘engineering’. While Maintenance is accountable to fix the plant when it breaks. Oh, and follow the PM schedules to ensure it does not break. I believe that the two can not sustainably exist mutually exclusive of each other. If they are not intimately connected, you will always have an overloaded Engineering department, and an unreliable plant. Why?

The frontline maintainers are the key reviewers of plant design and functionality, if enabled. They will highlight what are the small things that could potentially increase reliability. Sometimes, with a little guidance and collaboration, they can suggest small improvements that will take reliability forward in leaps and bounds. This way, Engineering will be able to make quick changes, and gain quick wins. 

If the two operate in silos, the frontline lessons will be in vain and the Engineering team will be inundated with problems, for which they need to first validate the problem, then try and find a feasible solution. When these solutions are implemented, new lessons will be learned but lost again. 

Now imagine they were working together. Imagine the waste reduction, the gain in efficiency.