Tag Archives: Uptime

 

Over the next five years, mining and metals companies are expected to spend between $25 billion to $30 billion annually to maintain their assets.

Largely driven by efforts to improve operational efficiency, reduce downtime, immediately reduce costs, meet sustainability goals, and manage operational risks in an increasingly volatile market, mining and metals executives are motivated to start their asset management transformation now. Delaying this transformation could result in lost competitive advantages, higher operational costs, and increased regulatory or market pressures.

Over the next five years, the mining and metals industry is projected to invest heavily in the maintenance of fixed and mobile assets. Various reports indicate that the industry is expected to allocate a significant portion of its CAPEX to maintaining and upgrading its assets. A substantial part of this investment will be directed toward maintaining critical assets required to meet global demand for minerals essential for the energy transition. In a recent survey conducted by Global Data, 48% of the companies surveyed indicated they plan to increase investments in technologies like AI and IoT sensors for equipment upkeep over the next two years.

Investment in predictive maintenance is becoming a top priority for many mining operations. Companies are leveraging their EAM’s with advancing technologies like Digital Twins, AI and IoT, along with other reliability and planning applications, and significantly transforming asset management and the asset lifecycle. These advancements in technology are expected to reduce maintenance costs by 20-30%.

Mining and metals companies integrating Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS), AI, and IoT are experiencing several quantifiable benefits, including:

USC partners with your organization and coaches your people to significantly impact performance outcomes and accelerate Operational Excellence

USC brings a tailored, structured, and disciplined methodology, along with a range of tools and techniques we apply collaboratively with client’s personnel. Whatever your challenge, we are the people who work with our clients to find full potential and unlock the hidden value.

USC help to identify waste, redundancies, and ineffective processes, and then rapidly recover the prioritized opportunities, and convert them to improvements in performance and operating profit. Further, our people embed with client teams to develop, enhance, prototype, validate and implement asset management strategies to drive, sustain and perpetuate improvements in asset lifecycles and equipment reliability, while changing how plans, schedules, and work is executed. In short, USC implements measurable, sustainable changes that drive asset performance and financial improvements.

USC clients experience measurable operational and financial results that significantly improve both the efficiency and profitability of their operations. Benefits delivered may include a 10-20% increase in overall equipment availability due to reduced unplanned downtime and optimized maintenance schedules and a 10-15% improvement in equipment utilization as predictive maintenance reduces the time equipment is out of service.

USC Helps You Tackle Key Challenges

Do you want to understand how prepared your company is to drive needed asset management performance and reliability improvements and what the key focus areas that will contribute to lower operating costs? Contact us today.

How reliable is your asset maintenance program

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The preventive maintenance methodology has become industry standard. An estimated 80% of asset and facilities stakeholders now leverage preventive workflows, while approximately half take advantage of predictive maintenance tools meant to further enhance such forward-thinking processes, per research from Advanced Technology Services and Plant Engineering. Why are so many businesses embracing this approach? The return on investment can be immense. Some see maintenance savings of between 12% and 18% percent, on top of the revenue-generating performance improvements that naturally unfold as a consequence of machine uptime increases, according to Transcendent. Companies on the outside looking in on the emergence and solidification of the PM model typically view these developments with considerable envy and race to keep up with the competition. However, firms attempting to play catch-up at hyperspeed often encounter roadblocks — most notably, the perceived cost of implementation.

Redesigning existing maintenance workflows is neither easy nor expense-free. These essential backend processes support production activities that directly affect the bottom line, and changing them, even incrementally, might seem risky, especially for organizations with thinner margins. However, the long-term costs that come with hanging on to reactive maintenance methodologies could very well outweigh the expenses incurred as a product of PM implementation and the shop floor disruption that could accompany such a move. Organizations looking to embark on this transition would be wise to unpack the entire cost equation and determine the potential ROI.

Understanding PM implementation costs

The Preventive Maintenance (PM) concept is easy to understand — focus on equipment upkeep and optimization, and address small mechanical deficiencies before they devolve into bigger problems bound to cause downtime. The idea is far more complicated in practice, however. To actually achieve PM implementation, maintenance stakeholders must navigate a multistage process that begins with program design. This initial phase normally involves establishing an overarching PM objective. Some organizations move forward with PM implementation with the sole purpose of saving money, while others want to ensure optimal shop floor performance. Choosing an end goal establishes the foundation for effective program development. Here, maintenance experts — ideally those intimately familiar with OEM requirements, Plant Engineering reported — design granular equipment management processes, including rotating and reciprocating mechanical component lubrication.

Understanding preventive maintenance implementation costs

Once maintenance personnel have developed an effective PM plan, they can move forward with deployment. This normally entails scheduling mission-critical PM tasks through computerized maintenance management software and training the staff members who will execute these actions. To ensure long-term PM sustainability, stakeholders will create and release program management and communication workflows that facilitate adherence and continuous improvement. This process requires considerable effort and can come with an equally substantial price tag. According to Plant Engineering, the expense breakdown might include items like this:

These are a handful of the most common expenses organizations navigating PM implementation encounter. However, the costs sometimes do not stop here — under-the-radar expenses can materialize post launch, per researchers from Oniqua Enterprise Analytics. These extra amounts actually come from over-maintenance. This occurs when maintenance teams become overly focused on equipment optimization and establish work intervals that are far too short, meaning staff members execute upkeep activities so often that both time and resources go to waste. A surprisingly large number of firms make this mistake, according to analysts for Oniqua, who found that 80% of PM tasks unfold over a period of 30 days or fewer and that 30% to 40% of these duties are applied to equipment that has little to no impact on uptime.

Assessing PM implementation ROI

While the aforementioned costs can certainly make PM implementation seem overwhelming, the operational returns that come with embracing this approach typically make these initial expenses easier to swallow. For example, researchers for ReliaSoft estimated that organizations with reactive maintenance operations in place pay around $8 per replacement part, while those with PM strategies spend just $2 per new equipment component. Additionally, PM programs often catalyze shop floor improvements that could only be achieved through purchasing new machinery. An operation that implements such an initiative might pay $100,000 per year to maintain PM workflows that increase capacity by 25% — a gain that would require an upfront equipment investment of $500,000 and $200,000 in annual staffing and asset management work, Reliable Plant reported. Together, PM-related cost reductions and productivity boosts can generate big returns, according to Jones Lange LaSalle, which found that some adopters stood to 545% ROI.

This sort of improvement is simply too significant to pass up for most modern businesses, particularly small and medium manufacturers, many of whom are just getting by within today’s fluid marketplace. That said, pursuing PM implementation can be an immensely daunting task for all organizations, regardless of sector or size. Here at USC Consulting Group, we have been helping companies across a variety of industries navigate PM implementation for decades, leveraging proven techniques and tools that simplify change management and lay the foundation for sustainable organizational growth via continuous operational improvement.

Contact us today to learn more about our work and how we can help your business embrace the Preventive Maintenance methodology.

 

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