The assessment and its benefits in practice
As this month’s newsletter focusing on the maintenance assessment, we would like to share some audit stories and the concrete benefits observed.
Maintenance organization assessment at a large process plant
The overall conclusion of the assessment showed that the company should focus on improving performance instead of further cost cutting: analysis of financial figures and comparison with benchmarks show that the plant has extra capacity to fund this effort, i.e. it can easily afford the additional cost. This would result in downtime reduction with easily measurable returns: a detailed technical study estimated returns at 1 million RMB within one year on the main machines alone.
Benchmarking of key metric (figures are in millions RMB)
CMMS assessment (SAP PM and various other systems) at a chemical plant
The in-depth assessment showed that the company underutilizes its SAP infrastructure but has built a practical way to work around it, using various additional systems and well-defined management procedures. Overall the maintenance system is working rather well compared to similar companies in China, whether using SAP or other CMMS tools. This is to the credit of the company’s strong maintenance team members and management.
Weaknesses in analysis and decision support started to affect the capability of the maintenance division to improve its performance, while production put increasing demands on reliability.
Siveco recommended implementing small improvements in SAP Work Orders and to develop better reports (probably using the SAP Business Warehouse tool already in place in other departments). A third-party mobile solution would certainly enhance the inspection process, allowing a full feedback loop to manage preventive maintenance improvement. The costs/benefits of the various options were analysed.
CMMS assessment (Maximo) at automotive plant
The assessment found that the maintenance organization focuses its efforts on basic preventive maintenance: inspection, greasing, etc… as it lacks the necessary tools to eliminate failure through technical analysis. As the maintenance team is understaffed and busy with production-related tasks, and without proper support from the CMMS, they do not have the time to manually process long lists of WO feedbacks, although they do have the technical knowledge to understand their machines and find solutions.
This situation finally leads them to insure themselves against breakdown risk by adding more inspections (i.e. more workload). This is consistent with the pure “workstation approach” of the current failure analysis tool: the inspection plan is based on workstation.
The systems proved to be one of the bottlenecks and no solution was proposed by the IT vendor other that providing resources to develop reports. These problems reflect implementation- rather than software-related weaknesses, resulting in low ROI on the CMMS investment.
Siveco recommended a complete course of action, based on improving technical feedback, with standard pick-lists for downtime, causes, actions etc. The equipment structures should be reorganised to accommodate such reporting (currently not possible). IEC 81346 or ISO 14224 standards were proposed as the basis for this change.
Facility condition assessment at a major retailer
A full facility assessment was conducted in one of the buildings, covering the building itself and all systems (HVAC, water, fire-fighting, lifts, etc). The study also included a review of the FM suppliers’ contracts, the quality of their work and the paper-based reporting systems. Siveco delivered a full assessment report in two formats: office documents (word file with pictures, Excel list of recommended actions, updated maintenance plan in Ms Project format) and in database format, easily up-loadable into a CMMS. For each problem detected, a diagnosis was proposed, together with corrective and future preventive actions, allowing the retailer not only to take immediate measures, but also to prevent reoccurrence of problems. A management solution was proposed in order for the customer to better manage its facilities in the long term.
Sample facilities assessment report (also delivered in Excel and CMMS database format)
Customers that have benefited from Siveco maintenance assessments include Auchan, Aotong Chemicals, Arkema, Bayer, Berlinwasser, Daramic, Evonik, Faurecia, FIAMM, International Paper, Nokia, Saint-Gobain, SCA Packaging, Shanghai 2010 Expo Pavillions, Sogefi, etc.
