Emerson Exchange 365

Well that depends ... While attending CERAWeek, I overheard the question around reliability and thought it worthwhile sharing the answer. New technologies, specific outcomes desired, and budget restraints can drive one approach over another:

• Transformational Maintenance & Reliability Program In the building of a greenfield plant, a recent client aspired to the goal of “no unexpected downtime” to meet corporate safety, environmental, and production goals. In this case and many others, a traditional approach is comprehensive, possibly the most expensive to implement completely, yet it delivers the most in savings and increased production. This approach is also appropriate on the opposite end of the spectrum. After a plant has been in operations many years, the actual location and type of assets may be buried in a paper trail that maybe hard to follow also if not adjusted over the years the maintenance approach may not optimized. The emphasis of the approach is to understand what and where assets are located, understand their criticality, clean the data and load it into the CMMS. There is significant savings associated with MRO spares management and increased production / decreased downtime changing from a corrective to a predictive maintenance program.

• Agile Reliability If you any operator, they can tell you which assets are the bad actors. The Agile Reliability focuses only on the near-term and stand-alone projects. It focuses on one element at a time: one bad actor to address, fix, and then choose another. This approach can bring quick rewards when budgets are constrained and you need proofs to move forward.

• A Digital Transformation Roadmap With new technologies such as Big Data & Analytics, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence; a more holistic approach, of which one element includes reliability and maintenance strategy, is a great way to navigate your Digital Transformation. It starts with a consultative approach using an assessment and understanding of where you are today across different competencies such as reliability, sustainability, data integration…; identifies a “North Star” and a proposed roadmap of scalable projects along the journey, and incorporates a program management office for steering & governance. In our experience, projects applying analytics and machine learning to improve reliability & maintenance typically are identified as top priorities.

So what is the best approach to reliability? That depends…. What are your goals and boundaries? Any of these approaches can bring you some degree of success, but choosing to do nothing insures eventual failure. So what are you doing in your facility? For more information contact us at www.emerson.com/opcertcon and our reliability experts can help guide your journey.