Mechanical Technology February 2016

maintenance –

from the last or even the last two surveys still in place? Similar to the example of the failed motor, the fact that corrective action needed to be taken was never brought to the attention of that part of the organisation that was in a position to do something about it. The cause and fix for both examples seem entirely logical and certainly very embarrassing and costly, but since there have been multiple such incidents in a variety of organisa- tions, it points to an endemic and common problem. In these situations, there is no point fixing the symptoms. It is essential to get at the root of the problem, which occurs for one simple reason – the physical asset management system is deficient. If it was as comprehensive and managed as it should be, then reliability engineering, energy management and maintenance would be brought closer together, since they have a common objective in taking care of the physical assets of the organisa- tion. In fact, let us consider just a few of the benefits applicable to these assets that would have accrued from a mature asset management system: • The fact that condition monitoring was required would have been a natural outcome from the asset criticality assessments that would have been done. • Historical failure analyses would have identified the most appropriate monitoring regime, considering both technical and economic factors. • The necessity for getting asset health data back to mainte- nance planners would have resulted in regular inspections and alarm outputs going to the right people to respond to them. • When a defect condition was detected, timeous corrective action would have been initiated, planned, scheduled and completed, with the necessary spares and resources made available and the corrective action verified for efficacy. • Plant performance would be routinely measured and reported to top management. • The statistics showing improved plant availability and ef- ficiency would ensure ongoing management support. • Because benefits to the organisation are quantified and vis- ible, the sustainability of the plant’s proactive maintenance strategy is ensured. The term ‘physical asset management’ employed here is not a loose one, but in the strict sense of the principles embodied in the ISO 55000 series of standards and related documents. It is the key to success for any asset intensive organisation since it permits the knowledge and tools that are required by the organisation to be harnessed in order to extract the intended value from its assets, and so achieve its purpose. It is a structured approach in which techniques and processes are determined and formalised to allow such an organisa- tion to both achieve and demonstrate that it is managing its assets optimally. It fully supports all aspects of a mature proactive maintenance strategy. This is well illustrated in the chart opposite, which is an extract from the Institute of Asset Management publication ‘Asset Management – an anatomy’ , version 2, July 2014. Seen in this light, how well is your condition monitoring inte- grated into your asset management system and how well would your enterprise asset management system (EAMS) perform? q

Mechanical Technology — February 2016

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