Plant & Works Engineering September 2022 Issue

16 | Plant & Works Engineering www.pwemag.co.uk September 2022 Maintenance Matters Focus on: Condition Monitoring S tudies show that over 70% of maintenance work is conducted on a reactive basis, and unplanned maintenance is on average 3 to 5 times more expensive than planned maintenance. Reasons for this include poor machinery condition, lack of spare parts and resources, excessive demand on maintenance operations, lack of discipline and knowledge, and poor planning. Very often the root cause is culture. A habit has formed over time and is supported by reasons that seem very valid. “This is how we have always done things and we have been successful, why would we change it?” As a result of this kind of cultural inertia, introducing a computerised maintenance management system (CMMS) can be challenging for many organisations. PEMAC, a market-leading CMMS software provider, recommends the following 10-step process for implementing a successful intelligent maintenance programme: Step 1 – Gather and assess your data If you truly want to implement maintenance intelligence, then creating measures of the current approach help highlight what’s wrong with not following good practice. This will also help you identify the scale of the challenge you face. These measures help to highlight recurring problems and help you to begin to put financial measures around the current approach. You will now be able to effectively calculate downtime costs, e.g., average cost of one hour of downtime for each specific machine. This data will feed into your maintenance intelligence approach and provide the foundation that your maintenance program will be built on. Step 2 – Determine the bottom-line value of maintenance to your organisation Now that you have your per hour of downtime cost estimate available, you can use this to determine how much money you can save by improving your maintenance process. Calculate the value increased availability of an asset will add to your organisation by looking at machine availability and the per hour cost of downtime previously analysed. You will see how a seemingly small increase of 3 – 5% will have a huge impact on your bottom line. Now you can set your sights on a much higher improvement. This allows you to justify an increase in spend on preventative maintenance but also justifying why a machine needs to be taken out of production to save money. Step 3 – Don’t stop there – analyse your other variables An unplanned Maintenance job is three to five times more expensive than a planned job. Using your data to prove this helps to justify a number of key changes. Look at the factors that affect asset availability. What’s the underlying root cause – man, machine, method, material? Use the data to deploy the correct fix and assess the processes that affect asset availability. How do you manage and control work orders? Could your technician response time be improved with a mobile system meaning less time spent in the office filling out reports? Can you devise a formulated plan to ensure critical spares are always on hand? Examining the causes of downtime and then fixing the underlying cause and not Stephen Davis, Marketing Director, PEMAC looks at 10 steps for implementing a successful intelligent maintenance programme. How to implement a successful intelligent maintenance programme