Competitive machinery in a dynamic environment

Management often tends to consider the short term, because this means a quick and easy cost reduction. This makes it challenging for maintenance managers to convince the management of the necessity of maintenance and developing a long-term vision. What can you do to make sure that your machine park is competitive all the time in such a dynamic environment? These 3 tips will help you to make your machinery competitive, and to keep it that way.

1. First of all it is important to register your machinery as accurately and completely as possible. Think of general basic information about the machine/equipment (year of construction, manufacturer) and the common failures and predictive maintenance activities. And then there’s all maintenance activities, preventive and predictive, to list.
2. Make sure you have a clear short-term and a long-term life span prognosis. Apart from the essentials of your assets you include criticality, condition progression, commercial, economical and compliance ageing. Compare this life span prognosis with the theoretical life span and the needed life span.
3. On the basis of all of the above, what do you think would be a fitting action to keep your machine park competitive? Make a comprehensive planning. Actions that arise from the planning are for instance repairs, revision work or replacement. And, always consider your stakeholders.

The problem with looking only at the short term is that often assets become depleted. This means cost saving in the near future, but a quicker deterioration of machinery in the long run. This causes more failures and downtime. The need to keep downtime to a minimum is high and requires more than just timely maintenance.