Capital Equipment News November 2021

EDITOR'S COMMENT

FLEET OWNERS ARE CHOOSING TO ‘SWEAT’ THEIR ASSETS

T o survive a challenging operating environment, fleet owners need every competitive edge they can get. As everyone pores over their balance sheets and all aspects of the business to find advantages, many capital equipment operators have been finding solace in extending the lifecycles of their existing assets due to their business and operating circumstances. Judging from recent conversations with

lowest possible cost. In such an environ- ment where the quality of service is the ‘sweet spot’ of operational performance, the significance of choosing a reputable service provider that understands the fleet owner’s goals cannot be reiterated enough. The right provider will ask probing questions about the desired outcome to support the fleet owner’s requirements. It is for this reason that many OEMs/ dealers are seeing increased market penetration for their service contracts. The concept of risk sharing is a key compo- nent of preventive maintenance. With a shared-risk maintenance agreement in place, the service provider performs routine maintenance based either on the calendar or operating hours of the equipment and addresses all failures that occur during the contracted period. If downtime occurs, the agreement shifts failure risks to the service provider, giving the fleet owner a safety net. As part of the lifecycle extension trend, the popularity of remanufacturing or refur- bishment has shot up as fleet owners seek to give their mission-critical assets a second or even a third life. A rebuild includes changing out all the major and most of the minor components of the machine. Calibra- tion and settings adjustments are performed where applicable. The finished product is a revamped version of your machine that will run and perform like new. However, it’s also important to know when to stop sweating your assets. There is nothing wrong with pursuing a low-cost strategy. However, the essence of this strategy should be about balancing perfor- mance, cost and risk. The trick is to ensure equipment performance is sustainable over the life-cycle of the equipment.

both fleet owners and OEMs, there is an increasing trend in the capital equipment sector to ‘sweat’ assets. Rather than throwing cash at new equipment, fleet owners are limiting their capital expenditure and focusing on keeping existing assets humming along – a valuable strategy during difficult economic periods. To provide context, a large quarrying group in South Africa used to run its load and haul machines for up to 10 000 hours before replacement. However, due to capital constraints, the company is stretching its machines’ lifecycles well beyond 20 000 hours, with some of them already approaching 25 000 hours, and counting. Elsewhere, I have also seen a mining contractor stretching its fleet of articulated haulers and excavators to over 20 000 hours, more than double their initial projected first life. While spending money on new assets is out of the question, fleet owners still expect their sweated assets to meet production goals as efficiently as possible, with little to no downtime. To achieve this, they are adopting strong preventive maintenance regimes to ensure that machines are kept in optimum condition. Having a thoughtful maintenance strategy in place can definitely reduce equipment failures and result in continuous uptime and cost savings. As we move into the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), better, smarter and faster maintenance is proving to be within reach for the industry. IIoT has in fact be- come an easy win for condition monitoring of assets. Where extended lifecycles are the option, it’s important to prioritise preventive main- tenance to extend the asset’s life and get the longest utility from the equipment at the

Munesu Shoko – Editor

capnews@crown.co.za

@CapEquipNews

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CAPITAL EQUIPMENT NEWS NOVEMBER 2021