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Posted On: 11/07/2006

Automation Fair highlights strategic maintenance

PlantServices.com

The October 24-26, Baltimore, Md. Automation Fair focus on strategic maintenance began when Keith Nosbusch, chairman and CEO, Rockwell Automation (RA), highlighted what the company considers today’s most powerful drivers for manufacturing productivity:

• Lower total cost of ownership
• Faster time to market
• Better asset optimization
• Broader risk management

Each depends heavily on equipment availability and reliability. “It’s time to see maintenance for what it really is – a strategic business asset,” Mike Laszkiewicz, RA vice president, customer support and maintenance, told a press gathering. “We want to help our customers transform maintenance to an asset that improves their business performance.”

Moving maintenance from an expense to a strategic business asset requires the right balance of preventive maintenance (PM), predictive maintenance (PdM) and run-to-failure (reactive) activities. “But these modes aren’t being optimized,” Laszkiewicz says. “Plants are using the wrong mix, and have the wrong emphasis.”

Plants must improve productivity, cut costs and extend the useful life of capital equipment while dealing with reduced staffing and an aging workforce – “competency erosion,” Laszkiewicz calls it. Data he’s gathered says in today’s facilities where downtime costs as much as $300,000 per hour, 18% of maintenance work is unnecessary and only three to seven replacements are hired for every 10 retiring workers. “Many plants have reduced maintenance’s scope to core activities – only those items deemed critical by upper management, often without a lot of analytics behind the decisions,” he says.

Plants doing PdM say they’re spending 15% on it, but need to be spending 33%. They say they spend the major part of their resources on PM, but 60% of the cost is unnecessary, and excess PM can actually induce failures. And although it’s by far the most expensive mode due to production downtime, plants typically devote 40% of their resources to reactive maintenance while acknowledging it should be about 12%. As a result, Laszkiewicz says, “Two-thirds of the typical company’s potential profits are burned up in maintenance.”

Restoring lost competency is key, whether it’s done internally or with the help of service providers. Partnerships can be a short-term or, increasingly, a long-term solution to fill competency gaps.