Innovative Asset Management Tools Increase Plant Reliability, Throughput and Availability

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Typical Benefits of Predictive Maintenance

Studies have shown that predictive maintenance is far less expensive than time-based (preventive) maintenance. Typical benefits reported by users include:

• maintenance savings of €10 million within a year of implementation related to the identification of badly performing assets;

• reductions in reactive maintenance by 40 percent in less than a year; and

• improvements in availability totaling €3–5 million per plant per year.

Over the years, plants have made considerable investments in predictive diagnostics, including monitoring systems, smart instrumentation and valves, asset management systems, portable vibration monitoring, and more recently wireless monitoring devices. By identifying poorly performing assets in real time, these tools enable the development of strategies based on current asset health and operational priorities.

With so many kinds of critical production assets, asset management strategies can take a variety of forms. These include technology to monitor mechanical equipment, advanced instruments and control valves to improve process operation, and improved work practices to take advantage of existing and new technology. An integrated asset strategy incorporating all these elements is needed to bring maximum return.

The chosen strategy should ensure “bottom to top” compliance with rules and policies, make full use of diagnostics, and act according to measured asset health rather than relying on original equipment manufacturer (OEM) maintenance guidelines. The relatively recent PAS 55 guidelines may improve performance by helping organizations develop and deploy asset management strategies.

The importance of corporate governance will force change over time, but fundamental changes on how data is retrieved and correlated will still be required. The importance of demonstrating both historical stability and predictive trends will be crucial if a company wishes to meet the forthcoming ISO 55000 standard for asset management, due to appear in the next few years.

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