Maintworld 4/2018

ASSET MANAGEMENT
critical equipment - bearings out of their
boxes; electronics out of their anti-static
bags; elastomeric parts whose shelf life
expired two years ago; un-bagged filters
lying in dirty bins; motors stored standing
on their shaft; un-tagged, worn out butreparable
spares inadvertently intermingled
and stored with the ready-for-use
spares. And, of course, the ubiquitous,
well cared for spare parts that only fit a
machine that was retired and hauled to
the scrap yard ten years ago.
Another major cost is the lack of coordination
between the maintenance
operation and production. Maintenance
crews often show up to carry out work
on a piece of equipment only to find the
equipment is not available to be worked
on. In addition, much time is spent attempting
to convince production managers
that it is sometimes necessary to
overhaul a piece of equipment before it
breaks down.
A major reason for these conflicts is
the misconception that production’s objective
is to produce and maintenance’s
objective is to fix. Likely, production is
king and maintenance is a service whose
job is to get things running after they
break. As long as maintenance is viewed
as a “fix-it” organization by production,
there is absolutely no incentive to hold
down costs by completing preventative
or predictive maintenance procedures, or
performing planned and scheduled work.
Someone needs to develop a better, more
convincing way to explain the underlying
truth of the old adage “you can pay me
now … or you can pay me later”
Changing business conditions have
been forcing companies to re-examine
20 maintworld 4/2018
their maintenance operations, and there
is evidence of limited improvement. One
reason for the growing attention is that
the need for maintenance has increased
as plants have become more automated
and equipment more sophisticated. Beyond
these reasons, with many plants at
or near capacity and facing rising production
costs, unscheduled downtime resulting
from poorly managed maintenance
operations has become increasingly
intolerable. Slowly and surely, over the
past thirty years or so, this imperative has
driven organizational change at successful
companies, resulting in the rebirth of
the maintenance organization as a modern,
progressive contributor to the bottom
line. Unfortunately, many of those
companies that have failed to see the light,
have been driven from the market place.
Rising energy costs have provided
another incentive for companies to maintain
their equipment at peak efficiency. It
should be remembered that energy costs
rose significantly in recent years, and
based on current trends they will continue
to rise.
Maintenance can contribute significantly
to energy conservation because
well-running machines require less
energy than a machine that needs repair.
A well-running machine is also a safer
machine. Oil and gas production companies
must contend with a growing array
of regulatory issues. Stricter government
safety regulations have been a further
impetus to better maintenance. The
Clean Air Act, OSHA, other government
regulatory agencies and internal safety,
environmental, and health requirements,
add additional concerns and constraints.
Post-BP Gulf oil spill, you can expect a
whole new massive round of regulatory
rule making for the oil and gas industry.
Going Forward
Successful companies are also changing
the whole concept of the maintenance
operation. The emphasis has switched
from fixing machines to keeping them
running, and increasing equipment reliability
to levels unobtainable ten years
ago, unheard of thirty years ago.
The modern maintenance organization
has tools at their disposal ranging
from Reliability Centered Maintenance
(RCM), Preventive Maintenance Optimization
(PMO), huge multifunctional
integrated Enterprise Resource Planning
tools (CMMS) such as SAP, Root Cause
Failure Analysis, Maintenance Planning
and Scheduling, and a host of other fully
mature management technologies and
strategies that lend themselves to achieving
best-in-class performance among
peers. Finally, with the advent of Industry
4.0 or Digital Asset Management,
companies are reaching for unprecedented
levels of performance through data
analytics and real time operations.
Optimizing the maintenance organization’s
contribution is more than just
spending more time on the tools – [In
fact, it should lead to significantly less
time on the tools!]. It involves employing
techniques and methods that focus on
eliminating waste and redundancy and
increasing efficiency and effectiveness.
The best organizations view maintenance
as a sophisticated process that requires
dedicated professional staff to manage
it, while continuously seeking ways to
improve.
The maintenance organization today
is no longer a necessary evil or afterthought
but a core part of the business,
that if properly deployed can create a
strategic long-term advantage. The best
organizations believe that the best maintenance
is also the lowest cost maintenance.
The impact of good maintenance
goes beyond the operational bottom-line
and also positively impacts safety, integrity
and reliability of the organization’s
physical assets. In order to compete in
today’s economic environment, maintenance
must be elevated to a strategic level
on par with operations and engineering.
Those companies that have achieved
this are now the pace setters in industry.
Those that won’t, can’t, never will, will
become…..?