Best-in-class performers in the manufacturing world spend 3.5 times less money on their maintenance budget compared to the worst performers, while their assets' availability is 14% higher. How do they achieve these results? By adopting the Maintenance & Reliability best practices.

Vision and values should be fully integrated into your organization's culture and regular assessments should be conducted to evaluate gaps and adjust action plans to achieve the organization's goals. Theses diagnostics should include (but are not limited to) the following elements : asset master data in CMMS, planning and scheduling practices, maintenance strategies, inventory management, craft skills development, leadership, health and safety, etc.

Effective asset hierarchy is fundamental to CMMS, and asset master data plays a vital role in this domain. CMMS relies on asset master data to track and manage assets, including in-depth records of each asset's location, attributes, history and maintenance requirements.

ISO 14224 provides a comprehensive basis for collecting equipment reliability and maintenance data, including:

• Equipment limits
• Equipment / component taxonomy
• Hierarchical classification

A parts list is essential for any plant to maintain its productivity as having the right items in the inventory can help the millwrights to replace the items in case of a failure or planners to plan a maintenance job without having any unnecessary delays.

For example, if a spare parts catalog at a manufacturing site has two of the same 1 7/16-inch ball bearing listed differently (different name, attributes and suppliers), when the time comes to reorder, the purchaser will have to place two orders of the same part.

There are two consequences for this:

1. It can result in overstocking of parts
2. It can lead to an increase in costs, as different suppliers usually charge different fees for purchasing and delivery

A Bill of Material (BOM) is a structured list of the components that make up a technical object or an assembly. Often an equipment's parts list.

While building BOMs in a CMMS, it is imperative to apply rules of standardization. These rules include but are not limited to:

• Class
• Attributes
• Manufacturer, MFR P/N…
• Standard Description

Example of optimized and standardized BOMs:

• OEM Description: SPHERICAL ROLLER BEARING 23148 CCK/C083W33
• CMMS Description: BEARING SPHERICAL 240 MM BORE 400 MM OD 128 MM WIDTH TAPERED STEEL CAGE

Asset Criticality Ranking holds significance as it aids organizations in prioritizing their maintenance efforts and effectively allocating resources. Through the assessment and ranking of assets based on their criticality, organizations can pinpoint those assets with the greatest influence on operations, safety, and profitability.

This enables them to concentrate their maintenance activities on the most crucial assets, ensuring they receive the necessary attention and resources to forestall failures and minimize downtime.

Criteria often include the impact of a potential failure on Maintenance, Production, Safety, Environment and Quality.

A good preventive maintenance (PM) program is essential in ensuring an efficient and reliable plant, both in terms of operation and maintenance. Regardless of the industry, if your PM program is inaccurate or ineffective, it will most likely lead to increased expected and unexpected downtime, high maintenance costs, and ultimately reduced productivity and performance.

Preventive maintenance should not be a checkbox exercise. It should be a valuable tool for enhancing plant reliability, reducing costs, and optimizing resource allocation. Embracing data-driven, insight-oriented PM practices is essential. PM should be seen as a means to ensure that every minute of a technician's time brings tangible value to the organization.

A good PM program should comply with the following statement:

• The right task (basic care, lubrication, objective inspections or predictive technologies)
• done by the right person (operator if possible, millwright, electrician, etc.)
• at the right time (when equipment is running if possible, down, quick intervention, etc.)
• the right way (detailed procedures, pictures, measurements)

Failure modes should be at the core of a good PM development program. Tasks are defined based on the potential risk of not addressing one or many of the failure modes.

Oils and grease are considered the blood of our machinery. A great lubrication program encompasses (but is not limited to) the following:

1. Meticulously selected lubricant (depending on speed, moisture, load, temperature, etc.)
2. Optimally calculated relubrication quantities and frequencies (based on the same elements above + lubricant type + component type)
3. Enhanced practices (detailed procedures, pictures, measurements)
4. Properly selected tools (top-notch storage policies, filtration, transportation, sight-glasses, breathers, etc.)

Procedures and plans exist for most maintenance jobs. Precision and tight tolerance standards guide and define all corrective tasks. All maintenance work should be performed according to the standard or best practices. SOP should be developed, maintained and shared with all maintenance personnel.

Organizations should have a dynamic matrix gathering all strategic needs for employees training, as well as new recruits. This matrix not only defines basic needs but also expertise skills in asset condition monitoring.

An individual training plan should be developed and adjusted according to the career path's potential. Trainers and instructors are methodically selected and a strong mentoring system for employees and new recruits is strongly recommended.