Asset Management ‘best’ practice is largely dependent on the industry and business conditions…

Regulation and public perception might dictate maintenance in one industry such as Oil & Gas. Or market conditions may determine the requirement which is often the case of Manufacturing. This is particularly relevant when demand for a product falls, in turn leaving excess capacity in manufacturing plants. However, there are some general rules that can prevent failures.

Avoid Unnecessary Corrective Maintenance

From a practicality point of view, if your organisation is disciplined and champions the following, then unnecessary corrective maintenance can be largely avoided:

1. Lubrication – Using the right lubrication for the right application and ensuring levels are correct.
2. Alignment – Drive and driven components remain within their aligned tolerances. Drives often become dislodged due to loose hardware or corrosion.
3. Keeping hardware tight – Maintaining the correct torque on mounting hardware.

Planning & Scheduling

The discipline comes from having a system that can plan and schedule the work effectively and then monitor its progress to completion in a timely fashion. A job often requires:

• A tradesperson of a certain skill set and certification
• Spare parts and in some instances special tools
• A set of instructions
• A safety assessment
• An estimation of the time to do a task
• Frequency – this could be based on a calendar or a run hour meter.

These all need to be planned on the job to ensure the tradesperson is effective and efficient in their delivery.
Ideally, a scheduling tool that assigns jobs to individual staff ensure the best utilisation. This avoids “cherry picking” or the practice of working through a list of jobs to find the one you would like to do. Many organisations experience an immediate 10% increase in staff “tool time” through the installation of electronic scheduling.

Mobility

Mobility is another tool that ensures the information required for the job is in the hands of the maintainer, with the added benefit of capturing real time information. Current and accurate data further adds value to the asset management system.
Putting in place these practices provides the elements to easily report on compliance. This is required to ensure important maintenance and associated value-add information is not delayed or missed. For example you might have a 2 week window to conduct a planned 3 monthly service. If the work is conducted beyond that period there is the potential for inducing higher wear and perhaps a shorter service life. Mobility often provides a more user friendly method of substantiating the work done and accuracy of data captured. By using a smartphone or tablet to capture photos, failure codes and read barcodes, you ensure more detailed maintenance information and accuracy.

Systems

As a general rule across a variety of different industries, 1-2% of your asset value is spent on systems to support Asset Management by those organisations that are operating ‘best’ practice.
If you are a Maximo user or are looking for further information on Asset Management and associated systems, BPD Zenith are able to provide the support and advice to ensure your organisation works towards your industry’s best practice.