By Jeff Walkup, Vice President, Sales & Marketing
The events over the last two-plus years have dramatically affected virtually every person in some way or another. These unprecedented times have created a myriad of challenges that industries and organizations need to navigate through. These challenges and delays don’t need to become the elephant in the room, rather they can be the opportunity that establishes a new benchmark or trajectory that previously did not exist if embraced.
While it may be difficult to embrace a “Work Smarter Not Harder” mentality or build a flexible plan of attack while battling ever changing economic conditions, companies that don’t try may find themselves inadequately set up to face these challenges.
Maintenance Planning Considerations
To proactively manage, restart and/or ramp back up your reliability and maintenance teams, the following are some fundamental basics for consideration:
- Establishing Short Term vs. Long Term Plans: With economic conditions still impacted by world events, this could be the opportunity to conduct a review of the effectiveness of your maintenance and reliability strategies. This requires the ability to drive organizational performance and determining ways to monitor and track key metrics. Inefficiencies can be identified and plans for continuous improvement can be developed. Partnering with an objective third-party such as Fluid Life can help you champion change and support your planning process. In the article Revisiting your oil analysis and maintenance program, I discuss a number of questions to ask when performing a review of your current maintenance programs.
- Routine Maintenance & Scheduling: While your equipment may have been parked or your fixed plant may have been shut down, those lagging and cumulative failure modes and corrective actions haven’t stopped needing to be addressed. You will need to analyze if the data, the asset and equipment status, people and previous process are still valid and how this impacts on your oil analysis/fluid testing programs. For example, supply chain issues (as noted below) may create a scenario where extended oil drain intervals are implemented. This maintenance program change can inadvertently lead to reduced routine oil sampling, creating the condition where unobserved wear or contamination between oil changes impacts significantly on the life of your equipment. Your Fluid Life team can help you review your equipment health data and use decades of experience to benchmark the effects of new maintenance program schedules and recommend opportunities for improvement.
- Effective & Efficient Workforce: With staffing shortages affecting every industry, your workforce, that may have been reduced due to layoffs or cost cutting measures, might not be available now. To cover short-term staffing issues, consider what part of your maintenance operations such as planning, scheduling or reliability can be done remotely by an offsite third-party that is trusted and knows your business.
- Disruptions in the Supply Chain: Supply chain issues have affected every industry sector in one way or another. Your service vendors likely have also been disrupted by this phenomenon. Are they still capable of providing the same quality and quantity of service as before? Your Fluid Life Team has been there for you each day and remain committed to providing a high level of quality service that you expect.
- Take Advantage of New Processes and Embracing New Technologies: Lets face it. A lot of things have changed and what might have worked before, well, that ship may have sailed. Be willing to think outside the box and do bold things to improve your operations. This can include new technologies such as oil property sensors which can significantly change the way you manage and monitor your equipment reliability. This type of out-of-the-box solution to complex problems are key to creating long-term maintenance plans which can reduce costs and improve reliability.
Whatever your challenge, we have a solution that’s right for you
Our reliability solutions are designed with your individual needs in mind. We’ll help you identify inefficiencies in your current oil analysis programs and lubrication processes, devise and implement plans for improvement and provide sustainable solutions and action plans, to put you in control.
Want to schedule an assessment? Contact us today as we have a TEAM of strong, committed real world experts at your disposal.