SKF Reliability Systems - Library

What Is Asset Management
Contractor services and management.
Very few manufacturing businesses or service providers are in a position where they can operate effectively
without contractors. While many core activities remain within businesses, often non-core activities such building
maintenance, cleaning etc are contracted. The use of contractors creates the need to manage overall costs and
compliance standards set by your company, which would include safety standards, work and documentation
standards.
Shutdown Management.
Shutdowns are undesirable events as they are often costly and reduce plant availability. To minimise the effect
on output, organisations need to manage shutdowns so all work is completed safely, to a defined standard,
and within the shortest possible time frame. This requires detailed planning and scheduling utilising many task
lists and procedures.
Resource allocation.
Are your resources being effectively tilized? What percentage of the work they complete is planned? Are you
always having your planned work interrupted by reactive work? Do you know how much of your peoples time is
being tilized? Setting up your maintenance resources to effectively cope with reactive work while maintaining
compliance on your PM program can be a balancing act. Getting it right can improve your efficiency and
effectiveness significantly.
Support services.
CMMS support.
Contrary to the belief of many senior managers, the CMMS does require a significant amount of support
including: maintenance of master data, creating and maintaining Bills of Materials, creating and managing the
equipment hierarchy, task lists, maintenance plans, system authorizations and training and mentoring in the
systems.
Does your business have a resource that manages these and other issues with your CMMS? If not how are
these issues being managed now. If the answer is they are not, then your whole system will fall apart in a short
time frame. An effective CMMS support service must be in place just to maintain what you currently have.
Engineering and concept design.
Do you design for reliability or is price the main driver of your capital purchases? Do you design for maintainability?
Typically over the life of a plant the cost of maintenance will be over 10 times more than the capital outlay. Is
the whole of life costing included as part of the design review? I haven’t every seen this done well after 28
years in industry. Can you access all maintainable components? Have maintenance strategies been designed
as part of the overall Engineering design? Are spares requirements embedded in design concept? There can
be many long term wins for businesses if these things are done well.
Capital management.
It is important that you have a view of the future state so you can plan for capital management. Sure you can’t
always see the future but it is far better to have a plan. What is becoming redundant? Are any machines at the
end of their serviceable life? Is the market changing and investment may be required? So far this has all been
about the need for capital; there is the management of capital projects and associated costs. How many capital
jobs have you seen run out of cash and somehow this extra expenditure ends up on the maintenance budget?
Are people held accountable for the successful delivery of a capital project?
Purchasing services.
Purchasing services are an integral part of asset management. Being able to obtain materials and services on
time in perfect order and at a reasonable cost can make or break your efforts. It is obviously not practical to
have all components on site or services on hand 24/7 so asset managers rely on trustworthy supply agreements
that encompass quality, price and delivery. Do you have 100% trust in your purchasing department? If not why
not?
Stores practices.
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When you look in your CMMS can you find the exact location of a component in your store? Will the part be
there if it says it is? Will the part be in serviceable order? How long does it take to goods receipt items into the
store and how do you know they are there? Does your store package items for planned work? And the biggest
question of them all…. Do you have squirrel stores all over your plant? Having the best practices occurring in
your store can improve the planning of tasks significantly, hence improving reliability and increasing uptime.