Adopting an appropriate strategy is key to ensuring
effective and efficient maintenance. Here,Geoff Walker,
director of Artesis, highlights the benefits of adopting a
predictive technique

Maintenance and repair is a constant
stress and often a guessing game
for many engineers, plant
managers and maintenance managers,
regardless of the sector.With the
consequences of poor maintenance and
repair reaching far and wide affecting
efficiency, productivity, profit and even
moral, adopting a maintenance strategy is a
simple yet effective solution.

Planning = Time = Benefits
More often than not the excuse for not
planning a procedure effectively is that there
isn’t enough time. In fact, in not planning,
more time is wasted, not just man-hours but
also production, line and lead times.

Planning is a productive tool and invaluable
to the running of a plant and/or works.

Adopting a maintenance strategy marks
the start of a fresh and new period in the
maintenance process.Managers and
engineers will learn from mistakes,
experience and successes to produce a
practical, realistic strategy. So, what makes a
‘good’ maintenance strategy?
With so many areas, acronyms and targets
it is hard to focus and set achievable
standards and so the strategy must consist of
a small selection of key focal points. As with
any job there is the room for human error so
this must be taken into account – acknowledge
human obstacles: if a certain person is
particularly good and efficient at one thing,
don’t give him or her the job that they’re not
so good at. Resources and personnel need to
be planned to ensure that the objectives
outlined in the strategy are achievable.

Above all, keep the document brief! This
needs to be an agreed working tool to be
read and reviewed regularly, not a mammoth
best practice guide, which will only gather
dust. Crucially, a maintenance strategy
should address two important and separate
areas, visionary and tactical.

Visionary strategy
This is an ‘attractive’ vision for the future
detailing of challenging targets, defining
measures and developed in conjunction with
other areas of the business if possible, eg
operations, engineering, finance, sales and
marketing. This should be reviewed
regularly, on an annual basis at least, and
look far enough ahead to not be constrained
by any current situations.

In mapping a plan of action it will allow
managers to prioritise efforts, agree on a
direction, gain additional support for
maintenance efforts and act as a way of
motivating, communicating and assessing
results.

Example of a Visionary Strategy:
1 We will instigate a predictive maintenance
initiative
2 We will increase plant by 15%
3 We will reduce total business costs by 10%
4 By 2012 we will have completed
maintenance policy reviews for ALL our
first criticality equipment and for 50% of
our second criticality equipment.

Tactical
The tactical part of the maintenance strategy
will enable engineers and plant and
maintenance managers to achieve the goals
and the ‘bigger picture’ outlined within the
visionary strategy.

Yet it is not a one-size-fits-all approach,
with each main/critical piece of equipment
assigned its own maintenance solution be it a
scheduled preventative maintenance
approach, a condition based, predictive
maintenance approach or run to failure
(breakdown maintenance).Making the
‘right’ choice has the potential to
significantly reduce overall business costs;
decisions makers need to be aware of the
criticality, implications and consequences of
failure (cost of downtime versus cost of
maintenance).

Performance optimisation can also be
improved by adopting the most appropriate
type of maintenance; it is not just about
avoiding breakdowns. A poorly adjusted belt,
an out of balance rotor or a misaligned
coupling may still function, in the sense of
providing a desired level of output but it
could be costing the business thousands in
unnecessary energy costs. The right type of
condition monitoring identifies anomalies
and issues within the equipment and can
help combat energy inefficiency and help
reduce energy and electricity costs by as
much as 10%, while benefiting
environmental and carbon reduction
initiatives.

As a working, ‘living’ document the
maintenance strategy should be reviewed
and revisited on a regular
basis. Once agreed, the
strategy may call for
improvements or revisions
so that the visionary element
can be achieved but it is not
to be treated as a job or
hard work.

The maintenance
strategy is a long-term aid
created to improve
business and equipment
performance and become
part of a daily routine.

Once adopted, the results
will speak volumes.