Maintenance and Reliability Best Practices. Ramesh Gulati
for the asset safely in case of an emergency? Do they know what operating parameters—pressures, temperature, trip/alarm settings, etc.—to watch? Make sure that operators and other support personnel have a good understanding of the answers to these questions. It is a good practice and very desirable to have these operating instructions laminated and attached to the asset.
Maintenance Procedures
Be sure that maintenance/repair procedures are current when used. Maintenance personnel should have the right tools available to perform maintenance correctly and effectively. Having a current procedure is an ISO principle.
When an asset is ready to be repaired, all items identified in the work plan should be staged at the asset site for craft personnel to execute their work in the most effective and efficient manner. Specialized tools should be kept at or near the asset and should have proper markings.
It is a good practice to laminate the procedures, drawings, parts list, wiring diagrams, logic diagrams, etc., and make them available at or near each asset location.
Operating Conditions
All assets are designed to operate under specific conditions. Check that assets are operating in the correct environment and are not being misused, i.e., overloaded or unsafely used. If they are not being operated in their designed environment (e.g., they are being used at a much higher level of speed than normal use), take steps to see that appropriate safety precautions are being followed and all concerned personnel are aware of the risks involved.
Workforce Skills
Ensure that the workforce, operators, maintainers, and support staff are all properly trained and have the right skill sets to operate and maintain the asset effectively. Although ignorance and lack of skill, etc., can be overcome easily by proper training, people’s attitudes and mindsets toward asset failure are somewhat difficult to handle. It takes a lot of effort and time to create the right culture.
Repair Documentation
Repair documentation—what we did, with some details—is very important when performing an analysis. We often see entries such as “Pump broke—repaired” or “Mechanical seal replaced.” Such entries help merely in maintaining failure statistics, but not in failure analysis.
The challenge is usually how to make data input easy for our craft personnel. For a good reliability analysis, we need to have quality data to understand how the asset was found before and after the failure, what actions were taken to repair, parts used, the time taken to repair, etc.
Designing for Reliability and Maintenance
If the asset is being modified or replaced, make sure that the operators and maintainers are involved with design reviews and are part of the improvement team. The asset should be designed with high reliability and ease-of-maintenance features. This best practice will be discussed further in Chapter 6.
Maintenance Management System: CMMS
A maintenance management system is an essential tool for all maintenance organizations. Used correctly and completely, a CMMS will help to improve the maintenance department’s efficiency and effectiveness and, ultimately, get more out of assets by streamlining critical work-flows, work identification, work task planning, scheduling, and reporting. It makes sense to use every aspect of the system that is relevant to the business to make the business better and to maximize the ROI.
Two types of systems are available. One type is an enterprise-wide collection of modular applications such as asset management, material resource planning, finance, and human resources. These applications or systems interface with each other seamlessly and can work effectively across many locations and plants. Most of these systems, first developed in the mid-1990s, are known as enterprise asset management (EAM) systems. Examples include systems from companies such as JD Edwards, IFS, Oracle, PeopleSoft, and SAP. They can be expensive to install as well as keep up to date.
Other types of systems are stand-alone applications related to maintenance management. They can be interfaced with other enterprise-wide systems such as finance or human resource systems. These systems are called computerized maintenance management systems (CMMSs). The CMMS name was coined in the late 1970s and 1980s when PM programs were automated using computers. Newer CMMSs have a lot more capabilities and functionalities than the older ones; they are easier to use compared with some EAM systems. Examples include Champs,DataStream, eMaint, Fiix, Ivara, Maximo/IBM, Maint Connection,Mapcon, MicroMain, mPulse, NetFacilities, SPL/Oracle-WAM, Upkeep, etc.
More than a hundred CMMS/EAM systems are available in the market, starting from $1,000 to over $500,000, depending upon the number of users or the size of the plant. Some of them cost just $20 to $50 per month per user or $5 to $50 per asset. Most of the new systems are now web-/cloud-based. Basically, now there are no major differences in the way both types of systems function, so the terms CMMS and EAM are often used interchangeably. Figure 3.5 lists some of the commonly used CMMSs and EAM systems.
CMMS/EAM systems should have the following capabilities,although they are not limited to them:
1. Asset/equipment history
2. Asset description and specifications
3. Asset register
4. CM results of PM and CBM findings
5. Configuration management
6. Contractor work management
7. Critical asset identification
8. Drawing and technical document management
9. EPA/OSHA permits
10. FMEAs and RCM analysis history
11. Asset hierarchy management
12. Inventory/spares management
13. Materials—MRO stores management
14. MTBF and MTTR data by assets and asset types
15. Nonrecurring work—failures/breakdowns
16. Pending work—backlog
17. People management
18. PM and CBM/PdM work procedures
19. PM optimization including reliability analysis
20. Pressure vessel certifications
21. Recurring-type work—PM, PdM/CBM
22. Reporting—standard and specialized reports
23. Timekeeping
24. Training management
25. Warrantee management
26. Work order routing
27. Work closeout and feedback
28. Work estimating data tables and links to other resources
29. Work identification
30. Work order management
31. Work planning
32. Work scheduling and resource balancing
FIGURE 3.5 Some of the Commonly Used CMMS/EAM Systems
Work Order Management Module
One of the most useful management tools in a CMMS package is work order (WO) management or workflow process. The workflow engine allows automatic routing of data through an optimized process, including configurable approvals, notifications, and automated transactions based on user-defined business rules.
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