The right maintenance strategy is performing the right task at the right time.
Asset Performance Management (APM) is a process that ensures that assets are safe, reliable, and efficient over their operating life.
The perfect storm is hitting many companies, with rising energy and input costs, infrastructure shortages (transportation, water, energy) compounded by the fact that their assets and their workforces are aging, yet they are still expected to improve safety, increase efficiency, and reduce cost.
To survive, they need to do more with their existing facilities and find ways to extend the life of these assets safely and reliably to ensure production.
Improving Reliability
Once an asset is built, the design is fixed and it is difficult from a cost perspective to change the design – even though throughout the lifecycle there are options for improving design through rehabilitation, replacement, or extension.
Also, the conditions under which the asset is operating are always varying. Factors such as weather, raw material quality, regulations, production demands, energy and water availability and quality, and other environmental factors put pressure on this fixed asset and impact its reliability.
Essentially, the right maintenance strategy is performing the right task at the right time.
In a reactive maintenance environment, too little is done too late leading to asset failures with high downtime and repair costs. On the other hand, a time-based maintenance environment, doing too much too early, leads to unnecessary parts/labour expenditure.
Maintenance strategy development practices such as reliability-centred maintenance (RCM) or maintenance task analysis (MTA) provide a structured approach to defining potential and functional failures (failure modes) and their associated risk-cost effective maintenance tasks. This ensures that the right task is performed at the right time adding value to the organization’s bottom line.
Turning Concept into Reality
We understand the real challenge is not developing the right maintenance strategy but implementing it in the field. Time-based maintenance, i.e. maintaining after fixed time intervals, is effectively implemented through the CMMS while condition-based maintenance, which is our goal, becomes a major challenge.
Asset performance management (APM) is a process that ensures that assets are safe, reliable, and efficient over their operating life. This is a continuous improvement process, it is not a one-time exercise.
The key steps are:
- Define your asset strategy
- Measure to ensure improvements are tracked
- Execute through work management systems
- Assess in real-time tracking and analysis
- Improve through a continuous loop
Devising and implementing the right maintenance strategy can only prolong life to an extent, but there comes a time that the asset must be retired and replaced. These tools help you to make the right forward-looking decisions and are valuable fact-based tools to employ for defensible asset investment or asset life extension decisions.
Gary Silversides; CEO
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