The active condition monitoring
programs aim to detect deviations in the operation of a team in order to plan
necessary corrective actions in the most effective way. Although the value of
these technologies is easy to visualize by the maintenance and reliability
staff of a plant, it is not always the case as regards the management of a
company. Many times this is due to the misalignment between the definition of
added value that management and maintenance personnel have. The maintenance
staff should be focused on preserving the function of the company’s teams,
while the management staff may have other initiatives, projects or departments
to which they should offer their support and focus. One solution to this
opportunity is to tie the metrics of the condition and maintenance monitoring
program to the criteria that the company understands to be those of priority.
There are tools within the field of engineering in reliability that help to
define maintenance strategies aligned to these criteria. Starting with a criticality
analysis we can define the risk of impact of certain assets to the corporate
goals of our company. In this way we can proceed to choose which tools would be
effective to define our maintenance strategy in an efficient way.
It must be taken into account that an effective RCM process requires a large
number of company resources, which can render it inefficient in the face of
assets of less criticality or impact on business goals. For these teams there
are also maintenance management software to carry out analysis of failure modes and define their
maintenance strategies including condition monitoring technologies in order to
make their operation more efficient and effective.
With these tools we can develop maintenance strategies for our entire
population of assets in a way that can be tied to performance indicators
aligned to the definition of value of our company. A Computerized Maintenance
Management System (CMMS) facilitates the process of monitoring and analyzing
these maintenance execution indicators.
After defining our maintenance strategies we can proceed to implement our
condition monitoring program using recommended standards such as ISO 18436 for
condition monitoring and machine diagnostics. These technologies will provide
us with the necessary information to assign resources and plan corrective
actions necessary to preserve the function of our teams in the most effective
way. A management information system of the condition of our equipment and the information
provided by our CMMS will allow us to have a clear vision of the condition of
our equipment and our ability to meet the expectations of our company. To have
a clear vision of the present condition, it’s recommended to have mobile app maintenance.
Maintenance alone is not enough
Maintenance alone is not enough to
fulfill this task. Logically, the organization of the maintenance area has to
adapt to the maintenance strategy, with the aim of replacing the resolution of
malfunctions with the prevention of breakdowns. The organization also has to
adapt to the particularities of the company with creative solutions. ‘Finding
the right combination’ means intelligently combining maintenance strategies
with a view to minimizing expenditure on this concept. The cost of maintenance
operations must be set against the utility they report. This integral approach
and the problems that derive from it can be addressed with numerous strategies.
The determining criteria are: user behavior, status and age of the facilities,
and financial resources.
Each maintenance scope requires its own maintenance strategy. For the
controlling of maintenance and the analysis of weak points, a structuring of
the maintenance points (technical points and installations) is of vital
importance.
