July/August 2019

10 | Plant & Works Engineering www.pwemag.co.uk July/August 2019 Maintenance Matters Focus on: Asset Management T oday’s manufacturing plants tend to consist of a wide assortment of assets patched together like a colourful quilt. The machinery and equipment can range from highly advanced robotics to outdated legacy solutions, stretched past their normal life expectancy. Plant engineers must make these disparate assets integrate and perform as one, which can be a challenge, especially when lean budgets, escalating market demands and conflicting strategies add to the complexity. Forward-thinking plant engineers, though, can step up to the challenge, elevating processes beyond simple reactionary mode. It begins with a new mindset – and modern technology. How did we get here? Most plant engineers have already witnessed at least one transformational episode during their career, whether it was the adoption of Lean Principles in the 1980s, deployment of mobile solutions in the 1990s or migration to the cloud in early 2000s. More disruptions are coming. The pace of change continues to escalate, even as manufacturing growth starts to slow. Brexit and potential trade wars all add to global market uncertainty. In order to remain competitive in this high- stakes era, manufacturers must be agile, resilient and finely-tuned enterprises operating with minimal downtime. Waste, inefficiency and delays need to be curtailed, too, so the enterprise can focus on priorities: aligning with customers and developing new products. Increasing competition makes these capabilities more important than ever. Assets must keep running, even the machinery that may be past its prime and needing frequent repairs. With minimal resources and numerous demands for their time, maintenance teams must develop and follow a strategy. Today’s shortage of highly skilled technicians also places a strain on operations. Reactive maintenance is no longer acceptable. Fixing breaks, one emergency after another, is an inefficient use of resources. It frustrates personnel, managers and customers. First, change the mindset Achieving Prescriptive Maintenance, at the top of the asset maintenance maturity model, requires an evolution of processes and technology. But the change in thinking must come first. The new mindset must be the foundation for the journey, and like most changes in the company culture, this one must come from the top of the organisation. Only the top executives can establish priorities for use of resources and establish that assets have intrinsic Kevin Price, product evangelist for EAM, Infor, gives a seven-step journey to prescriptive maintenance. How to achieve prescriptive maintenance

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