Asset Maintenance Management

Components of an effective maintenance system.

If you are ever in the fortunate position of developing a maintenance system from the beginning, the list below will help you focus your efforts. Maintenance systems in small businesses, develop by default and without much forethought. This list puts together, in one place, the important components of a workable maintenance system.

World class asset management practices.

What makes a world-class asset management organization? The very best asset managers have maintenance under control. Their entire organization’s systems and methods are tuned to prevent unplanned stoppages. They only do that which has first been thought through and prepared for. But most importantly they understand the key factor to excellent asset care and work toward it continuously and energetically.

Maintenance Planning and Scheduling.

The book “MAINTENANCE PLANNING AND SCHEDULING HANDBOOK” by Doc Palmer and published by McGraw Hill presents the recommended way to plan for a maintenance crew. Reviewed by Mike Sondalini.

Maintenance management analysis.

Make your planner successful. The efficient use of men, materials and external resources requires coordination and preparation. When a job starts everything needed to do the job must be at hand and must be right to use. The preparation required prior to the start of a job is done by the maintenance planner. The planner’s focus is to prepare everything needed to execute a job through to its successful completion and have it ready and on hand before the job starts. How well the planning job is done directly affects how efficiently the men do the work and how long it takes for it to be done.

Benchmarking using Replacement Asset Value.

A benchmark is an end-distance point from the start. In the world of maintenance, it is the name for the targets that an organization sets for itself in an improvement program. Benchmarking is often against world best practices and it is used to provide direction and focus in an organization’s efforts to improve. When RAV is chosen as the benchmark it means that the annual cost of maintaining the plant will be measured against the value of the plant. RAV is a percentage of the cost to replace the plant. The lower the RAV the more effective the maintenance effort.

The continuous improvement of Thomas Edison.

There is a good chance you can make astounding changes and achieve incredible performance improvements from your plant and equipment. It can be done with the method used by Thomas Edison to solve his problems and make his discoveries. Improvements in the order of 20% maintenance savings with 100% on-time achievement of production plans are possible. The method is that of continuous improvement. You start by proving it works for yourself first and then, once you are sure it works you introduce it to your people.

Can your spare maintenance parts be made locally?

When spares cannot be purchased easily it becomes necessary to manufacture your own. Local fabricators, foundries, and machine shops can often make the item if you provide them with a design and specification. When you need a spare part for equipment made overseas be prepared to pay up to three times what it is worth. Wasting that sort of money puts ‘a chill’ up the spine of a maintenance manager. The logical thing is to ask if the part can be made cheaper locally. In a lot of cases, it can be with both a better price and faster delivery. Reverse engineering, as this process is often called, can offer an opportunity to lower maintenance costs and improve equipment operation.

Tools to focus on plant reliability.

The focus of maintenance has changed from repairing equipment to keeping it running for longer between breakdowns. This requires more consideration of how to get a longer running life between repairs, i.e. higher reliability, on a machine. To accomplish this a number of ‘tools’ have been invented and developed to allow maintainers to pinpoint problems and fix them. In this section three of the most effective ‘tools’ will be introduced. Root cause analysis, Weibull analysis, and lifecycle simulation can be used to help organizations achieve proactive approaches to maintain or adopt a “reliability-based approach” to maintenance.

Preventive Maintenance (PM) stops breakdowns.

Preventative Maintenance requires people to regularly walk around looking, feeling, listening, smelling (sometimes even tasting), and thinking about their equipment’s operating condition. The three foundations of classical Preventative Maintenance are regular lubrication checks, drive train monitoring, and equipment mounting inspections.

Predictive Maintenance (PdM) – the way of the future.

The practice of maintenance has been developing for the past 300 years. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution machinery, the control systems have played a critical part in our ability to produce consumer and industrial goods. Over that time different maintenance phylosophies have developed in response to changing technology and increasing costs. The progression in philosophies started with breakdown maintenance (BM), then to time-based maintenance such as preventative maintenance (PM) and shutdown maintenance. More recently condition-based maintenance (CM) has become significant. The next step is predictive maintenance.

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) - what is it?

Reliability Centered Maintenance is one of the great developments in asset management. It is a methodology that studies a piece of plant or equipment in detail, predicts how it can fail, and puts into place the best maintenance strategy to prevent failure or minimize losses from failure.

Fault-finding techniques.

A simple fault-finding technique. Fixing plant equipment about which you know little is daunting. Here is a simple way to help you successfully fault-find failed equipment.

Root Cause Analysis (RCA) answers your problems.

Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a step-by-step method that leads to the discovery of a fault’s first or root cause. Every equipment failure happens for a number of reasons. There is a definite progression of actions and consequences that lead to a particular failure. An RCA investigation traces the cause-and-effect trail from the end failure back to the root cause. Much like a detective solving a crime.

Failure analysis of gearbox, fan, bearing & shaft.

When equipment breaks unexpectedly it is good practice to investigate why it happened so that the root cause can be rectified and the problem prevented from again happening. There are no mysterious causes, only poor systems or system failures. It is not often that people intentionally sabotage a plant and equipment. By analyzing why a thing happened the lesson can be absorbed and changes made to business systems to reduce its probability of reoccurrence. In this section, four equipment failures are reviewed and investigated to determine their cause and the resulting necessary changes.

Keeping watch - added value from operators.

The watchkeeper of the old guarded their people and possessions. They were found walking about looking, listening, and watching for changes that signaled danger. Their job was to look for hazards and quickly raise the alarm before all of them were invaded and killed or captured into slavery. With sufficient warning, the home group could rally to the defense and counter-attack the enemy. In the world of plant and equipment maintenance, the watchkeeper is the plant operator.

Performance reviews for maintenance personnel.

One method to provide a formal means of appraising people’s performance is by using performance reviews. The employee and manager together use a structured check sheet to work through the key duties of the employee. They address both the good, and not so good, aspects of performance. The end result is an unbiased assessment of the employee’s current performance and a plan to improve it over the coming year.

How to present a winning financial justification for replacement equipment.

From time to time it becomes clear that an item of equipment is expensive to maintain and it would be cheaper to replace it. To get money for the change it is necessary to justify the expenditure and prove that replacement is a better decision than keeping the existing item. In this guide, you will be taken through the necessary steps to fully compare and justify the alternatives. You will be directed on how to make simple but convincing presentations to the financial people and departmental managers. The appropriate formulas and spreadsheet layouts will be developed simply and explained fully. By following the procedure and methods covered in this guide you will make such a strong case for a replacement that people will give you the necessary money to do it.

How accounting policies affect maintenance costs.

Accounting decisions can greatly affect maintenance costs. Two examples are the decision to purchase items as maintenance or capital and how to number plant asset items.

What is life cycle costing?

Life Cycle Costing (LCC) is a way of analyzing purchase choices and coming up with a justification to purchase a piece of equipment. If the analysis is done right and all factors are addressed, and the information is good, you would select the item that cost the least amount to own (buy and use) over its working life. This piece of equipment would perform its service at the lowest total cost to the organization than any other comparable item.

Asset Maintenance costs capital investment returns.

The cost of maintenance destroys your capital investment returns. When equipment is first selected the buyer has the choice to buy for quality and long trouble-free operating life or to buy based on the least cost. The least cost choice will result in high maintenance and operating expense for the life of the equipment. When the net present value cost of maintenance for cheap equipment is calculated in today’s dollars investors will discover that a large part of their capital will never earn them income but will be spent on maintenance and repair.

Some quality paradigms are expensive.

Quality is a mindset! When a wise man is given the chance to buy quality items he does so because quality pays for itself. A quality item lasts longer, runs better, and looks good when others fade. Changing the way you think about quality takes a lot of experience with using poorer options. When you are sitting down with your head in your hands wondering what can be done to get costs down, to get production up and how you are going to hit the key performance indicators, remember the importance of quality equipment, quality systems, quality training, and your quality mindset!

Maintenance budgets - what to do and how to use them.

Budgets represent plans or expectations for the future! They are a means to plan, forecast, coordinate and control the activities needed to achieve the business objectives. The budget document contains the amount of money that has been allocated to achieve those goals and the timing of its spending. Budgets cover the planned use of men, materials, external resources, and management effort that is expected to be sufficient to hit the targets. Once the budget is finalized it becomes a tool for feedback on how the actual progress is going compared to what was expected.