Introduction
No food and beverage (F&B) company can afford unscheduled downtime. F&B is an industry pressured by outside forces such as consumer tastes and commodity pricing. But what is within control are the operations that get product to consumers. One big way to optimize production is to slash downtime to deliver tens of thousands of dollars back to the bottom line. In this e-book we provide tips on harnessing IoT, data-driven enterprise asset management (EAM), and smart technologies to strike a careful balance between lean efficiency and maximized uptime.
The cost of doing nothing
Fixing assets when breakdowns occur has long been an industry standard. But manual record-keeping and scheduling invite errors. Worst of all, a lack of asset data analysis prevents insight into potential failure, which is necessary to keep production running and maintain a competitive advantage.
The five stages of maintenance maturity
Planning an EAM evolution in order to take control of unplanned downtime starts with understanding the maturity of your asset management strategy.
The five stages of asset maintenance maturity:
1. Reactive
What’s broken gets fixed. While this is still a common practice, it’s not sustainable as it leads to high downtimes costs, reduced inventory turns, and safety risks.
2. Preventive
Attempts to prevent failure are focused on general, wholesale efforts such as regularly scheduled maintenance, whether equipment needs it or not. While better than being simply reactive, this is a short-sighted approach that ignores big-picture issues and insights.
3. Condition-based
At this stage, the lifecycle of individual equipment, as well as parts, are looked at more carefully. Details such as the financial benefits of maintenance for that unique asset allows for analysis and reporting of return on investment. It also provides a roadmap for additional preventive measures such as routine inspections, lubrications, adjustments, and scheduled service.
4. Predictive
Data is collected to understand when failure is likely to occur, and its potential business impact. Mean time between failures (MTBF) significantly improves by mitigating risk. Any downtime is scheduled to occur with the least impact on customer service and productivity.
5. Prescriptive
This level not only identifies issues before they happen but lays out the processes and people necessary to avoid asset malfunction. Existing tactics are integrated with input from machine operators, performance evaluations, and results. With less time required for break-fix repairs, technicians focus on their own repair data analysis and long-term maintenance strategies.
Steps to take now
True change starts slowly, and any transformation involves time and patience—for both staff and leadership. What’s more, not all assets are created equal. Based on organizational impact, individual assets can fall along different stages of the maintenance maturity continuum. However, there are some organizational mindsets that need to be in place.
Embrace disruption
Staff and leaders should recognize that IoT, the proliferation of sensors, and emerging technologies such as AI, machine learning, and mobile enablement are key to consolidating, analyzing, and distributing real-time data across the enterprise.
Set priorities
Start by looking at the most mission-critical assets, from equipment, to transportation, to energy and power sources.
Apply the power of analytics
Consolidated data is ripe for automated and sophisticated data analytics, demand forecasting, and is the basis for more predictable cash flow.
Maximize productivity with Infor EAM
Infor® EAM is enterprise asset management software that offers:
■ A flexible deployment strategy: in the cloud, on premises, or as a hybrid.
■ Reliability, high uptime, and the ability to scale as companies, computing power, and data needs grow.
■ Predictive, preventive, and condition-based monitoring capabilities to optimize maintenance for improved asset performance and ROI.
■ Greater efficiency through Infor CloudSuite EAM for Mobile.
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And, as always, contact ICCG to help provide you with insight and information. Schedule a complimentary consultation to review your questions.