Here is the conclusion of the “Reliability: A disciplined approach improves asset availability, plant performance and profitability” white paper. The link to download can be found at the bottom of this post.
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When it comes to reliability, strategic investments yield demonstrable payback. For instance, at a copper smelter in Finland, ABB was able to improve equipment availability and thereby raise OEE by four percentage points, enabling the facility to create hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenue each year. Concurrent with these improvements, total maintenance costs were reduced by 12%.
Similarly, during a recent pulp-and-paper mill engagement, ABB was able to boost equipment availability from 71% to 87% — while reducing total annual maintenance costs at the facility by 20% over the same period.
“While it won’t necessarily be easy, and results will vary from plant to plant, maintenance improvement initiatives often have a direct, demonstrable impact on earning power, especially when the efforts are able to improve OEE at the facility,” says Baptista, adding: “For instance, at one steel mill customer, it was shown that the ability to increase OEE by 10% would have the same impact on the company profitability as a 95% reduction in the total maintenance costs, or a 6.3% increase in sales prices.”
Meanwhile, payback periods of six months or less are common for many strategic maintenance-related activities, adds Ginder.
“Equipment will fail whenever it wants to, at any time of the day or night, and as many operators know, when that happens, it will be a mad dash to get it up and running again,” says Rosales. And in some cases, the unforeseen failure of critical equipment components or systems could have catastrophic consequences, in terms of safety, environmental issues, collateral damage or business interruptions. “The goal is to be as strategic and well-informed as possible, to minimize dependence on reactive maintenance, since that tends to be the least efficient and most costly approach,” he adds.
“Literally every piece of equipment you buy needs to be operated and maintained properly or it will fail. Yet when it comes to reliability, too often, people point to the maintenance personnel and say ‘It’s their job,’” says Rosales. “Reliability shares a lot of parallels with plant safety. At the end of the day, it’s everybody’s job.”
To download the complete white paper, please click on this link. I hope you enjoyed this white paper and we look forward to your comments.