Nearly 20 years ago Winston Ledet(1999) developed the Maintenance Maturity model. Predictive Maintenance is a key aspect of this model, that is just as relevant all these years later, in mapping out maturity in maintenance to deliver an organisation wide reliability culture that drives competitiveness.
The model steps through levels of maturity starting with Reactive (Fix it after it fails) where failures are responded to, and unfortunately at times also falling into a regressive state where due to budget, lack of resources it is not fixed with degenerating performance. Many companies do rely still on the Reactive approach which can still achieve reasonable OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) but it is the most expensive form of maintenance and for the organisation. The risk also with the reactive approach, is it can send the organisation in a death spiral of lack of PM(Preventative Maintenance) leading to failures, leading to lack of time and money and resources to do PM, leading to more failures.
The next level of Planned (Fix it before it fails) or Preventative Maintenance (PM) hopes to fix some of the woes of the previous level, is often where many organisations operate. Here efforts are made to plan, schedule and coordinate maintenance works to prevent failures. It is a lot more cost effective an approach than being reactive and delivers better OEE, but it can still be quite expensive with the amount of resources invested and especially if gets into scheduled change outs and overhauls which are often time based. An approach which can lead to over servicing, changing out perfectly good parts and with being intrusive with potential to create waste. In times of budget cuts, lack of resources and time that its often PM that suffers leading to organisations fall back in the Reactive space.
The Predictive (Measure it & Fix it) Level or Predictive Maintenance (PdM) indeed takes the Planned Maintenance to another level with condition monitoring and seeking out measurements to determine what maintenance should be done when. It builds on the foundation of planned maintenance but has ability to strip out waste with making informed decisions for appropriate maintenance with minimum of intrusion directly leading to greater OEE. Technology these days to is getting more and more accessible both price and capability to provide real gains in measurement, analysis and predicting failures and all this in a non-intrusive manner.
Predictive maintenance and condition monitoring that is encompassed is really the lynch pin of maintenance strategy and so crucial to get best from the planned maintenance level and foundational to next levels of maintenance maturity of Reliability (Don’t just fix it improve it) and the following level of Enterprise where focus is on improve and sustain.
With the crucial nature of predictive maintenance and condition monitoring in maintenance strategy, I have placed some focus in this year’s SIRF calendar on these aspects with workshops and round table meetings (one day conference). To bring together our membership to learn and share off each other on this important topic.
To kick things off later this month we have a workshop Pressure vessel Integrity and online monitoring at Qenos Olefins Altona,
Qenos put significant effort into managing their pressure vessels to monitor their condition with Non Destructive Testing (NDT) to maintain their integrity and will share what they do. We will also have Miro Katouzi, Asset Integrity Engineer at LMATS share a a brief presentation on advanced NDT methods for people familiar with NDT, who are looking for the new methods and their applications. This workshop is pretty much booked out, but provides an opportunity to get together with people from other companies and various industries to understand the various techniques and approaches being used.
Later this month we head to Liberty OneSteel at Laverton. Which is an excellent example of how a small dedicated team can utilise technology and techniques available in Condition monitoring to make the right maintenance decisions, drive strategy and directly impact on continuous improvements in OEE.
20th June, Condition Monitoring - Liberty OneSteel Laverton
There are still places on this and with an outlining of A-Z of condition monitoring whether it is something immersed in or at early days on your journey…its not one to miss.
Following that in August we head to BlueScope steel in Hastings on the important topic of optimising maintenance strategies.
7th August, Maintenance Strategy Optimisation - BlueScope Hastings
This workshop will have BlueScope Steel share on the considerable work they have done in optimisation of Maintenance strategies to great result in removing waste and significantly impacting the efficiency and effectiveness of Maintenance resources.
Later that month we go to AGL’s Loy Yang A power station for a workshop on High voltage assets with regards condition monitoring and condition assessments.
21st Aug, HV Assets Condition monitoring and assessments - AGL Loy Yang A Power Station
Our Round table (one day conference) in September at Mulgrave Country club, gives the opportunity to hear from people in industry actually pioneering maintenance technologies, particularly in the predictive and condition monitoring space. A chance to share best practice with others and also learn from others on how they are utilising these technologies to unpin their maintenance strategy to deliver reliability and greater competitiveness.
19th Sept Pioneering Maintenance Technologies Roundtable - Mulgrave Country Club
So no matter where you and your organisation are on the Reliability journey, come join us over this year to learn and share with other SIRF members on the journey to collectively drive greater competitiveness!
Article by Alain Le Bon