There are fundamental differences that separate process manufacturing from other more general manufacturing companies that need to be taken into account when selecting an appropriate long-term plant maintenance solution.
The nature of the process manufacturing industry is characterised by high capital investments. Maintenance costs are high, typically amounting to around 10% of installed capital per year. This is a significant fixed cost and any solution a company implements to effectively reduce that expenditure will have a direct benefit to the bottom line.
In the process industries, integration of plant maintenance with operations and safety practices is vital. Most process manufacturing companies deal with hazardous chemicals or operate using high temperatures and pressures. Ensuring a safe environment before maintenance takes place is critical. Maintenance systems need to have a strong emphasis on safety and tightly integrate operational safety with traditional plant maintenance.
The nature of this hazardous environment is such that safety information needs to be made available intelligently to the maintenance team through the system. The issuing of plant clearances (or permits to work) needs to be closely aligned to the maintenance solution - the maintenance work order for a team working on a line containing sulphuric acid, for example, should identify the hazard, specify the personal protective equipment to be used, the precautions to be taken and outline the first aid measures relating to the hazard.
Process manufacturing plants typically run continuously, 24x7. All are characterised by high levels of inter-dependency between plant operation and maintenance to ensure continuous production is not interrupted by unplanned downtime. For this reason maintenance and production schedules need to be tightly integrated. From an organisational perspective the maintenance and operations teams need to work closely together to initiate all necessary work the minute the plant becomes available for maintenance.
Accessibility to accurate, high-quality information is fundamental to the effectiveness of the maintenance team, so the selected maintenance solution should have extremely good engineering information capabilities to give maintenance personnel access to relevant drawings, data sheets and safety data for items of equipment on the plant.
Accessibility to accurate, high-quality information is fundamental to the effectiveness of the maintenance team.
Gavin Halse, MD, ApplyIT
Many companies embark on internal methodologies to design out flaws in their plants on an ongoing basis. One such concept of continuous improvement is reliability-centred maintenance in which maintenance, operational and technical history is regularly analysed to understand root causes of machine failure. This information needs to be captured and made easily accessible in a maintenance solution where it can be used to design out problems by adjusting processes accordingly.
Maintenance solutions also need to be user-friendly. The plant maintenance modules of sophisticated ERP solutions tend to be centred on financial information rather than designed specifically to support the maintenance technicians in their work. There is a definite role for specialised maintenance solutions that are designed around the needs of the maintenance team rather than just the finance department, and this may not be fulfilled by standard ERP functionality.
Holding spares is another area where things can go wrong if the maintenance system is not well integrated into the company`s procurement systems. All too often stock inventories are filled with incorrectly ordered spares because the buyers responsible for replenishing stocks are non-engineering-oriented, and not in regular communication with the maintenance team, so they have limited understanding of the compatibility of the right spares for the job.
Unfortunately the problems only surface when the spares are drawn, and this can result in extended plant downtime.
In order to have the desired impact on the entire organisation, maintenance systems need to support inter-organisational communication and collaboration, and be accessible to the procurement, inventory, operations, technical, safety and maintenance teams in a company.
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