The cumulative effects are 1) less support on the plant floor for ongoing maintenance needs, 2) greater complexity in spare-parts management, and 3) an increased risk of losing vital expertise. Many manufacturers and industrial operators are struggling to stay ahead of maintenance issues, and are creating a reactive or run-to-failure mentality and unnecessary downtime.
It’s time for manufacturers and industrial operators to evolve their MRO strategies from reactive or time-based programs to a proactive, modern, asset-management program. Using a connected, data-driven approach to do so can do more than improve maintenance repair and operations (MRO) – it can deliver bottom-line cost reductions through improved OEE and reduced downtime.
A smart MRO approach can help organizations be more proactive in addressing risks before they become downtime events. For example, workers can use centralized asset intelligence to easily locate and identify the status of troubled devices, keep track of device service cycles, and better manage device and system firmware. They also can use health-based alerts and notifications to identify devices that are experiencing problems and take action before they fail. From a storeroom perspective, asset intelligence can help optimize the management of critical spares.
From an MRO perspective, asset intelligence from converged information technology (IT) and operations technology (OT) systems can help organizations streamline maintenance and storeroom activities, reduce reliability risks, and create proactive maintenance strategies – all in support of greater productivity.
Implementing this “smart MRO” approach begins with a comprehensive understanding of a company’s installed asset base. Although this can be done through a manual audit of assets, a better alternative is a diagnostic reliability service that automates the data-collection process. This involves using a control-layer application that can scan and auto-discover all active networked devices. The application collects identity information for each asset, such as its location, series, catalog number, and firmware. It also collects health information, such as current, temperature, and voltage; this information is crucial to understanding asset integrity.