The Human Element – A Differentiating Factor

Other areas, such as production for example, are made up of a group of tasks to be performed in a set manner and in a routine fashion. On a daily basis the tasks involved in the operations of a mine site, a manufacturing plant, or transport operations are performed in a similar way designed to best meet corporate requirements. This generally means a set range of activities requiring very specific abilities and skills.

In asset management there are routine tasks to be carried out, yet there is also a need to respond, sometimes rapidly, to changing demands on the machinery and resources. The administrative effort required to execute asset management is therefore not only a set group of activities. Rather it is defined by the ability to respond to a range of different tasks, needing a range of different skills, at potentially any moment.

This requires different managerial skills from those of managing an operational role. An asset manager may need to respond rapidly to a number of events, determine the relative importance of each and assign the correct resources to fix the situation in a way that will best benefit the organization. Given the pressure on asset management in general, this is no easy feat.

Similarly a maintenance technician’s daily program will generally include a number of small, often unrelated, tasks requiring broad levels of knowledge and skill. How these small and unrelated tasks are carried out can often have a dramatic impact on the overall productivity of the business. When asset management professionals are unable to adequately react to an unplanned event, such as a sudden equipment failure, it can impact on the profitability of the entire process - regardless of the business type.

Efficient administration of asset management is not an area of competitive advantage; rather it is a competitive necessity. In administrative efforts this centers on the identification and removal of waste that most organizations live with as a part of doing business. These can generally be grouped into-

-          Wasting time waiting for equipment to become available

-          Wasting time waiting for the correct parts to arrive (or due to the wrong parts being supplied)

-          Wasting time waiting for the correct skills to become available

-          Wasting time due to a poor understanding of the work to be done

-          Wasting time re-doing poorly executed tasks

The Content of Maintenance Regimes

The use of machinery is now more prevalent than at any previous time in history. In many industries machines now perform tasks that were previously carried out by people; in other industries there has been a marked increase in the levels of process automation. The increase in dependence on machinery is a factor that has also become a competitive necessity and has driven vast improvements in business productivity and profitability.

For example - In the mining industry of Western Australia there is a need to transport large quantities of ore from remote inland locations, across hundreds of miles to coastal ports so they can be shipped to clients in other countries. During the 1970s the process of stockpiling this ore, then reclaiming it for loading onto trains for transport, was an extremely labor intensive operation.

Labor was required to lubricate machinery points, ensure safety of personnel and manually operate the machines. This required operations personnel on the ore reclaiming machines as well as to control the complex conveying systems and loading operations. The physical involvement of people also required a high level of attention to personnel safety, particularly as the machinery and materials together weigh thousands of tons and were at all times in close proximity to their operators. This also forced necessary stoppages when conditions were not within what were understood to be safe working conditions.

During the 1980s much of these industries embraced the emerging programmable Logic Controller (PLC) technologies. These technologies made the full automation of these functions a possibility. Today these processes are managed in a way that enables them to work in an entirely inter-related fashion. One of the main benefits of this is continual automated production, eliminating many of the inefficiencies of manual processes with a fraction of the original labor requirement. As an additional benefit, automation has also eliminated many areas where human error could occur.

The results have been enormous increases in the levels of productivity of these machines, as well as a reduced level of risk to employees as they are often able to work without manual intervention. Yet in doing so there was a need to replace human interventions with continuous monitoring instrumentation, automated equipment for greasing and controlling, and the installation of programmable logic controllers. In this case, as in all cases regarding automation and replacement of humans with machinery, the importance of the maintenance of the machinery doing the work increased substantially.

In the above example it can be seen that in this particular industry the advent of automation technologies and increased mechanization enabled great leaps in productivity levels. This is similarly the case in other industries where machinery has been used to replace people. The use of robotics, for example, is very widespread and has replaced workers in laboratories, manufacturing enterprises and many other industry sectors. Maintenance tasks regarding lubrication, adjustment and regular monitoring are often replaced with detective tasks in order to ensure continued operation of the automated processes.

In all cases the importance of the work required to maintain these machines has increased enormously. Due to the inter-related nature of the automated and mechanized processes a failure of equipment is something that immediately affects downstream processes. This requires a higher degree of reliability from the machines themselves, which in turn leads us to the maintenance policies that we apply to these machines.

Competitive Advantages from the Productivity Perspective

The question “ How can asset management contribute to the ability to produce more?” needs to be asked of the areas of efficiency in execution as well as on the make up of the maintenance regime itself. Some examples of this approach may include-

-          How can we increase production uptime of machinery via the reduction of repair time(s)?

-          How can we increase production capacity through more reliable machinery?

-          How can we increase production uptime through reducing administrative waste?