Quality and readily available data is needed in order to cost-effectively carryout maintenance activities. This data helps us to take informed decisions that offer optimal results, which in turns affects the maintenance and manufacturing organizations in varying degrees. These organizations are being challenged by factors such as increasing competition, demands of share holders for greater returns on investment, societal expectations for efficient resource utilization with little or no environmental impacts and safety of employees. The evolution of the maintenance function can also be seen in various tools/systems like computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) used to make it more effective. Even at this, the maintenance industry is still plagued with the following problems:
- Human data repository and employee turnover,
- Poor utilization of the CMMS tools in review of previous maintenance activities as a way of understanding equipment failures and thereby in a position to fine-tune maintenance strategies that lead to increased equipment availability and reliability,
- Poor basis of determining maintenance budgets in budgetary allocation,
- Continuous appropriation of using CMMS Tool to demonstrate prudent maintenance practices with the opportunities to negotiate reductions in engineering biased and or fine insurance premiums.
The role of quality data in reliability and maintenance of equipment is great. Various equipment that are under the care of the maintenance function are themselves produced through the compilation of necessary data that were eventually used in equipment design and manufacturing. It has been ascertained by researchers and industrialists that such data collection in equipment design is less than optimal, which results in low inherent equipment reliability, poor availability and maintainability. While it is now standard practice to involve the maintenance function in the design of new plants and equipment in a bid to further assure maintainability.
Some of the main significant areas of quality data in the maintenance and reliability function are as follows:
1. Effectiveness of Maintenance Strategies/Repairs – Maintenance strategies are normally put in place to ensure installed equipment is ever ready to render the services for which they are acquired for. Also to assure installed equipment in its operations will comply with all relevant regulatory and environmental requirements. It is inevitable that equipment in the course of usage will break down and necessary repairs need to be carried out to bring them back to service as quickly as possible. For effective coordination of maintenance activities, it is essential that all works and repairs that are carried out on installed equipment be captured appropriately.
Using the CMMS, the effectiveness can be reviewed and analyzed with a view of identifying areas in need of further optimization or improvement of maintenance practices. Frequent repairs can easily be spotted and subject to further improvement efforts.
It is therefore necessary to select the relevant maintenance data that define the work process, capture the data, and enter the data in the CMMS at the right time and in the right format, with the help of Technological Inheritance Technique.
2. Budgetary Allocation – Activity Based Costing: Business organization exist for the sole reason of maximizing the returns of those who have put their earn income in the business. It is important for maintenance activities and the associated costs be accurately captured by maintenance department. At this point, it is necessary to mention that, maintenance data and its associate costs can be captured accurately, entered into CMMS and used for maintenance function with the help of Technological Inheritance Technique.
3. Equipment Replacement Program – Maintenance and Engineering Organizations are constantly seeking equipment that delivers best service and value for their outfits. Therefore, it is relevant to tract or monitor data such as:
- Spare consumption with associate costs,
- Repairs and associate costs,
- Down Time,
- Mean To Between Failures (MTBF),
- Mean Time To Repairs (MTTR),
- Training Costs
The main reason for this program is to determine the equipment total cost of ownership. Such data should be handy in the economic analysis of replacing old equipment and a new replacement at a future data. The determination of the equipment total cost of ownership and its economic analysis is possible with Technological Inheritance Technique.
4. Insurance Premiums – Evidence of good maintenance practices supported by good maintenance records/reports based on factual data or real-time data with technological inheritance technique can be used to demonstrate insurance risks managers how low the risk is and hence its attractiveness to rather conservative premium payout.
5. Regulatory Compliance – Industrial organizations are increasingly being placed under the radar with respect to the environmental impact of their activities. Legislation in most countries require that certain installed equipment be subject to periodic inspection, recalibration and monitoring to assure their technical integrity, while in operation, hence the need for technological inheritance technique.
In conclusion, all the above significant areas of quality data in the maintenance and reliability function can be integrated with a single – “Technological Inheritance Coefficient”, which can be used to evaluate the overall equipment effectiveness
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