Plant maintenance is a process which starts once the construction project is accomplished and continues across the entire facility lifecycle. The main objective is to ensure a maximum equipment availability at a lowest possible cost. The facility condition should permit the equipment running at an optimum capacity and with no interruption in production.
Plant maintenance is a process which starts once the construction project is accomplished and continues across the entire facility lifecycle. The main objective is to ensure a maximum equipment availability at a lowest possible cost. The facility condition should permit the equipment running at an optimum capacity and with no interruption in production.
The main types of the maintenance are the corrective, preventive and predictive maintenance. The corrective maintenance is performed as soon as an equipment fails. Frequently the time needed to repair the damaged equipment is longer because the equipment needs to be inspected, necessary material procured, and then repaired. If there is no redundancy, the equipment failure will cause a production loss. Correlated with the fact that the failure may occur in a busy production period the lost profit opportunity can reach the highest possible values.
The preventive maintenance assumes planned inspections and small repairs on a regular basis with the scope to prevent unexpected equipment failures. The preventive maintenance can be planned to avoid the busy production periods, therefore the lost profit opportunity is reduced to the minimum.
The predictive maintenance is based on a regular basis inspections, and small repairs only if necessary. This decision is taken based on advanced diagnosis techniques and instruments which can ensure an accurate prediction of the equipment condition.
Depending on the plant specifics a proper maintenance strategy is selected. For industrial facilities a combination of the above methods is an optimum solution to keep the maximum plant availability. Usually, the maintenance process is implemented in a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS), which will keep a database with the maintenance schedule, repairs history, and all the related documentation.
Project Management Portfolio Consulting team has the experience in various CMMS implementation (SAP PM) for clients in Romania, Europe, Middle East and Russian Federation. We can provide consultancy and implementation services for plant maintenance projects.