Maintenance management, asset value and the business world (2)

Continued from last week Facility management-related health and safety guidelines are also important. A few examples of these include:

Sanitation and janitorial services
Pest control
Waste management
Managing HVAC, electrical, and plumbing work
Repairs, rehabilitation and replacement
Security of premises and people

Minimise equipment failure and production downtime

Maintenance teams strive to maximise equipment availability, and they are better able to do so when preventive maintenance jobs are managed well. Maintenance technicians must be able to stay on top of preventive maintenance to keep machines in operation so that failure and production interruptions are minimised. At the same time, downtime cannot be avoided entirely, so when machines do need repairs, they must be done quickly and efficiently.

Extend useful machine life

When maintenance tasks are properly delegated, prioritised, and completed quickly, machines last longer. Over time a good maintenance plan improves reliability, availability, and maintainability. This is done through proactive maintenance work, which can include preventive, predictive, and condition-based maintenance. Preventive maintenance includes minor maintenance jobs and inspections to prevent asset breakdowns. Predictive maintenance uses real-time asset data collected through sensors, along with historical performance data and advanced analytics to predict when failure will occur. Condition-based maintenance uses real-time data to identify when an asset’s performance or condition reaches an unsatisfactory level.

Improve product quality

When machines are better maintained, the result is improved product quality and a decrease in the number of products that need to be scrapped or reworked. Improved product quality leads to better reviews of an organisation's product and in turn, more satisfied customers and in turn, more sales.

Develop improved policies, procedures, and standards

A final maintenance management objective is to continually develop and improve upon policies, procedures, and standards that lead to better maintained equipment, better production system and cost reduction. In order for this to be successful, there must be a mutual understanding between the maintenance department and other departments to plan, control, and direct maintenance activities. This includes procedures such as knowing how to report maintenance issues to the maintenance team, what system to use to communicate the production and maintenance schedules, and how others will be notified of asset repair status. What facility managers must do to meet maintenance management objectives

Cost tracking

Strategic maintenance management requires smart budgeting. There are lots of software that can be used to budget for maintenance more accurately and faster. Maintenance software can help track maintenance costs by tracking the costs of maintenance work and MRO inventory purchases. The software gives you the ability to filter into all levels of data. This includes specific assets and repair costs associated with them, such as supplies, parts, and labour. These cost factors can be used to make informed budgeting decisions. With all of this information at your fingertips through maintenance reports and graphs, you can even use this information as a vendor negotiating tool. Maintenance reports can be used to view equipment cost history, inventory cost history, work order cost history, and YTD (year to date) and LTD (life to date) equipment cost history. The software also has cost centre functionality for more specific cost tracking.

Preventive maintenance scheduling

One of the most important features of maintenance management software is preventive maintenance. Maintenance allows you to create a preventive maintenance programme, scheduling tasks at any time and interval needed. It can be challenging for maintenance teams who have never had a preventive maintenance programme in place to fully implement it all at once. With Maintenance Select, you can roll out the software at a pace that works best for you.

Safety, minimising downtime, and improving maintenance procedures

Maintenance helps you to keep up with safety standards through preventive maintenance scheduling, automatic work order activation, and notifications via email so you can stay on top of inspections. It can also be used to ensure communication of safety protocols on all work orders. Maintenance improves documentation of the fact that safety protocols were followed. By using CMMS software as part of your daily maintenance routine, you will minimise equipment downtime and interruptions in production. Less downtime and smoother production leads to greater production value and better product quality. Finally, the daily use of CMMS software such as Maintenance can be incorporated into your maintenance procedures to improve organisation of your maintenance process. It is important to understand the difference between asset availability, asset functionability and asset reliability. Asset availability, functionability and reliability are three commonly used asset performance metrics in manufacturing environments, and are often confused. Asset availability is the physical presence of assets. Asset functionability is the ability of assets to perform its objectives, and asset reliability is the degree to which an asset can be relied on to perform when required. Asset tagging Asset tagging is the process of affixing tags or labels to assets to identify each one individually. It is an asset tracking method. It increases the visibility of an organisation’s assets, leading to improvements in asset tracking and asset maintenance management including regular asset appraisal. The benefits of asset tagging include asset assessment and offloading when necessary.

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