Month: August 2020

Why CMMS Software is Essential for the Power and Energy Industry

Posted: 8/28/2020

Power plant smoke stacks emitting smoke against a blue sky with trees and water nearby, referring to power plant maintenance.

The power and energy industry is essential to our everyday lives. Without their services, we can’t cook or keep our food cold, regulate our home’s temperature, or use electronics. We are highly dependent on electricity and natural gas, whether this electricity is generated through nuclear, coal, renewable, or wind power. We require it for even the simplest tasks.

Maintenance management in the power and energy industry should be taken very seriously to minimize the chance of power outages and maximize electrical output. To keep assets productive, power plants need a strong, robust maintenance management plan to meet their unique challenges. Learn more about what this industry does, what maintenance challenges they face, and how computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software helps power plants address them.

Power Plant Maintenance

Power plant maintenance is complex and requires dynamic processes and regular preventive maintenance tasks to ensure production runs smoothly while people stay safe. There is often a power plant maintenance engineer or maintenance manager who supervises all maintenance work to ensure it is completed to company and industry standards. If a problem on site does not get addressed quickly, it can turn into an emergency. Power plant maintenance includes corrective and preventive maintenance for equipment such as gas powered turbine generators and boilers, among other assets that use compressed air to generate electricity.

Maintenance teams also optimize plant operating capability by maximizing availability of power generation assets Plant Load Factor (or PLF) is also an important focus for power and energy industry maintenance because it measures a plant’s capacity utilization.

Wind Turbine Maintenance

Wind turbine-generated energy, a form of clean energy, is a great alternative to traditional fuel types. The U.S. is a leader in the clean and renewable energy industry. Despite the desire to convert even more energy to wind-power, the high cost of manufacturing and maintaining a wind turbine slows progress in this area. Estimated costs for maintaining a wind turbine range from $42,000-48,000 per megawatt (MW). Keeping the wind turbines in optimal condition mitigates these costs.

To ensure wind turbines remain fully operational at all times, maintenance workers must continually lubricate parts such as gearboxes and bearings. They must frequently check the connection between the turbine blades and other systems. There are sensors on most units that use predictive maintenance to send signals to connected maintenance systems when maintenance is required. Technicians work at a height of 300 feet or higher; therefore jobsite safety is a number one priority and concern.

Overall, the power and energy industry strives to make their maintenance processes as efficient and productive as they can, through total productive maintenance (TPM) when possible.

Read More: What is Total Productive Maintenance?

Power and Energy Maintenance Management Challenges

The power and energy industry experiences maintenance management challenges in both power plants and wind turbine farms.

Producing Safe Energy at All Times

Nuclear, coal, hydropower, and steam-fueled power generation facilities require vigilant procedures to operate. They must stay online and constantly produce efficient, safe energy. Diligent maintenance management is required to do so, while also considering public safety, the environment, and the protection of workers in the plant.

Equipment Needs Frequent Monitoring

Maintaining equipment, especially on wind farms, is challenging compared to nuclear power. It requires continuous or frequent monitoring of the health of machinery, and performing maintenance work accordingly. Those working in this industry have adapted best practices used in other industries such as industrial manufacturing and mining and natural resources. The goal is to schedule required preventive maintenance activities for technicians that specialize in wind energy at the appropriate intervals.

Continuous Inspections

Because assets in the power and energy industry must be running at all times, continuous inspections for power plant and wind turbine equipment need to be completed. These inspections make certain that parts are lubricated and systems are connected. They also ensure any necessary repairs are found and made before they become emergencies, if at all possible.

Safety and Regulatory Compliance

Another challenge in power plant maintenance is adhering to regulatory compliance standards, including those set by Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). It is challenging because technology in this industry is rapidly evolving. What’s up to date now may no longer be so in six months to a year. Regular examination of new requirements and continuous education in this area is imperative.

How a CMMS Helps Address Power and Energy Industry Challenges

Control, Monitor, and Predict Process

Ensuring that power plant maintenance is done well requires a three step method. The first is to control, which means to keep track of inspections and ensure compliance to all regulations and standards. Next is to monitor data so you can stay abreast of how your equipment is operating. The third step is to predict future maintenance jobs by implementing a preventive maintenance plan, which will increase asset reliability and lessen downtime. Assets that are in good condition or “healthy” reduce the overall waste created during production. CMMS helps make this process possible by keeping a record of past inspections, providing easily accessible data for regular monitoring, and enabling advanced scheduling and prioritization of preventive maintenance work.

SCADA System Integration

A CMMS system can help address challenges faced by the power and energy industry. A CMMS system makes it easier for maintenance teams to meet the high demands of its customers, which include homeowners, tenants, businesses, and municipalities. One way a CMMS does this is by integrating with SCADA systems which detect abnormal conditions, faults, and alarms in real time.

When the power and energy CMMS system works together with a SCADA system, the CMMS can automatically create a work order. Based on this information, it can send it to the correct person to do the job. This industry is all about increased asset availability, which can be improved by using a CMMS to perform more preventive maintenance. CMMS software manages asset data and uses API technology to share maintenance data between business systems.

Corrective to Preventive Maintenance Shift

Power and energy industry CMMS software can shift the paradigm from corrective to preventive and predictive maintenance, which is a goal of many power and energy organizations. Studies completed by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) determined that it costs $17-18 per horsepower every year to perform corrective maintenance on machinery after it breaks down. The cost of preventive or predictive maintenance for a power plant’s machinery is between $7 and $13 per horsepower, which adds up to substantially lower costs over time.

Better Organization and Accountability

CMMS software, as energy asset management software, allows energy organizations to better organize their equipment and facilities. At the same time, CMMS software can increase accountability of maintenance managers and technicians. Using a CMMS makes it easier to standardize procedures for efficiency, track warranties, and improve planned maintenance turn-around times.

Power Plant Commissioning

This asset management software is also useful after the commissioning of power plants. During commissioning, machinery and other components are tested to see if they perform as a system in the way they are designed. Once the power plant has completed this process, a CMMS offers the functionality to support an enterprise while remaining easy to use. Some unplanned maintenance and repairs are inevitable. However, viewing data in computerized maintenance management software allows you to complete most corrective tasks before they become emergencies.

FTMaintenance is CMMS Software for Power and Energy

To reduce failure and lost productivity in today’s fast-paced energy production environments, CMMS software is essential. If you need a tool for more effective energy maintenance management, look no further than FTMaintenance. This CMMS system is packed with advanced features for not only asset tracking, but job scheduling, labor costs, and inventory tracking as well. It also helps maintenance teams keep detailed records of their equipment and assets. Power plant maintenance, along with maintenance for other types of energy organizations, should largely be focused on preventive maintenance. The FTMaintenance preventive work order process will facilitate the scheduling of maintenance jobs.

FTMaintenance CMMS software is important for the power and energy industry, as well as organizations in any industry. Request a demo today to learn more about how FTMaintenance can work for you.

What is Lean Manufacturing?

Posted: 8/27/2020

The word “lean” highlighted amongst other words on a black background related to manufacturing.

An inevitable result of the manufacturing process is the creation of waste, and it comes in many forms. Implementing lean manufacturing techniques enables organizations to target and eliminate waste, leading to more productivity and ultimately, higher profits.

Because the maintenance team is responsible for equipment maintenance, it must also eliminate waste in maintenance processes that threaten efficient production. This article provides an introduction to lean management and discusses how the maintenance team contributes to a lean manufacturing system.

What is Lean Manufacturing?

According to the American Society for Quality (ASQ), “lean manufacturing is a system of techniques and activities for running a manufacturing or service operation” with the goal of maximizing the value delivered to customers. This is done by eliminating waste (i.e., non-value-adding activities) at each stage of the production process.

Origins of Lean Manufacturing

Lean manufacturing originates in the automotive industry, starting with the founder of Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford. Ford’s moving assembly line process cut out much inefficiency from manual processing to make mass production possible. Over time, the Toyota Motor Corporation continued to improve upon Ford’s idea to create the Toyota Production System, which focuses on “the complete elimination of all waste in pursuit of the most efficient methods.”

Today, lean manufacturing concepts are used in many industries including:

Principles of Lean Manufacturing

Principles of lean manufacturing chart

Image derived from Lean Enterprise Institute at https://www.lean.org/lexicon-terms/lean-thinking-and-practice/

There are 5 main lean manufacturing principles that guide organizations on how to optimize their production process:

  1. Identify value: Understand the value customers place on your products (i.e., what problems they need to solve).
  2. Map the value stream: Visualize every step of your manufacturing process, from raw materials to delivery, to identify which activities add value versus create waste.
  3. Create flow: Optimize your manufacturing process by eliminating bottlenecks, reducing changeover time, and leveling production.
  4. Establish pull: Manufacture product only when there is demand.
  5. Seek perfection: Strive towards excellence by making ongoing, incremental changes towards your goal.

8 Wastes of Lean Manufacturing

8 wastes of lean management

If waste is to be eliminated, one must know what types of waste exist. As mentioned earlier, waste is any activity that does not add value to the customer. Lean manufacturing identifies several types of waste within the manufacturing process.

  1. Transportation: Unnecessary transportation of employees, tools, inventory, or equipment
  2. Inventory: Producing quantities of inventory that exceed demand
  3. Motion: Unnecessary movement of people or equipment
  4. Waiting: Idle time, such as waiting for materials to arrive or for equipment maintenance to be complete
  5. Overproduction: Manufacturing product before it is truly needed
  6. Over-processing: Adding features to a product that are not required by the customer
  7. Defects: Producing products that are not fit for use, resulting in rework or scrap
  8. Unused talent: Not taking worker’s ideas and input into account when making decisions

The Toyota Production System further organizes waste into the following three categories:

  • Muda (wastefulness): Waste that is produce by unnecessary, non-value-adding activities, materials, and other work.
  • Mura (unevenness): Waste due to fluctuations in demand, resulting in an uneven work pace.
  • Muri (overburden): Waste caused by overworking people or machines; working in an unsustainable way.

Lean Manufacturing and Maintenance Management

Injection molding machine

Lean manufacturing focuses on production – so what does it mean for maintenance organizations? Since maintenance and production are so closely related, one could justify that adequate maintenance enables lean manufacturing. Therefore, any changes to the production process also require changes to the maintenance process.

For example, problems encountered in a continuous flow process shut down the entire production line, requiring maintenance to either respond quicker to downtime or implement proactive maintenance techniques that prevent such problems from occurring. Each of these solutions requires changes to maintenance operations, techniques, tools, and management.

Keep in mind that the lean philosophy applies to any process or function, including maintenance. “Lean maintenance” aims to optimize maintenance and asset management activities, which is commonly plagued with waste caused by excessive MRO inventory, over- or under-maintaining equipment, and inefficient maintenance tracking.

Implementing lean maintenance can improve productivity, reduce maintenance costs, increase asset reliability and longevity, and make the maintenance team look more competent. Additionally, lean maintenance gives you the ability to do more maintenance work with the same or fewer resources. Given the maintenance technician shortage, finding ways to reduce maintenance costs without losing employees is especially important.

Lean Tools and Techniques Used by Maintenance Organizations

Given its scope, lean manufacturing utilizes multiple tools and techniques to eliminate waste and improve efficiency. We have highlighted the lean tools most relevant to maintenance management in this article. A more comprehensive list is provided on LeanProduction.com.

Lean Tools

The following tools are part of the lean methodology in general, though we discuss how they can be applied to maintenance management.

5S

5S is an organization system that aims to create efficient, effective, and safe work environments. Also part of the Toyota Production System, 5S seeks to reduce waste in employee workspaces. 5S gets its name from the 5 steps it includes:

  • Sort (seiri): Remove any unnecessary or unwanted items from the workspace.
  • Set in Order (seiton): Arrange items in a logical, organized manner.
  • Shine (seiso): Clean the workspace.
  • Standardize (seiketsu): Make sorting, setting in order, and shining routine activities.
  • Sustain (shitsuke): Form long-lasting habits and update as necessary.

One of the most common workspaces to improve through 5S is the maintenance storeroom. Storerooms in many organizations are messy, cluttered, and create several inefficiencies that lead to higher MRO inventory costs. However, an organized storeroom can improve efficiency by 10% to 30%. More on this topic can be found in our article, How to Organize Your Maintenance Storeroom.

Just-In-Time Inventory Management

Just-in-Time (JIT) inventory management is an inventory management technique that enables organizations to meet demand while working with minimal inventory. For production, this means only producing enough goods to satisfy customer orders. Materials are ordered to arrive “just in time” to fulfill the order.

In a maintenance context, demand is typically driven by preventive maintenance (PM) because tasks are scheduled and the required part quantities are known. Organizations may also refer to maintenance reports that show historical part usage trends to estimate demand for corrective maintenance (CM).

Using JIT inventory management for MRO items, organizations may opt not to stock particular items that can be sourced locally and obtained quickly when needed. Doing so saves storeroom space and inventory management effort. Just-in-Time inventory management is discussed further in our article, MRO Inventory Optimization Techniques.

Poka-yoke (Mistake-proofing)

Poka-yoke, or mistake-proofing, means to minimize the number of mistakes employees make in order to avoid defects, rework, or scrap. Maintenance managers can limit employee errors by:

  • Improving the accuracy of data entry through barcode scanning
  • Providing step-by-step instructions for routine maintenance tasks
  • Developing and communicating clear policies and procedures
  • Clearly labeling equipment, storerooms, stocking locations, and tools for easy identification
  • Providing ongoing training opportunities
  • Holding employees accountable for performing quality maintenance work
  • Implementing a work order approvals process to ensure work is done correctly
  • Providing quick access to a digital library of maintenance documentation

Putting measures in place to prevent common errors leads to vast improvements in the quality and consistency of maintenance work. This translates to improved asset reliability, extended asset life, and lower maintenance costs.

Kaizen (Continuous Improvement)

One of, if not the most important, element of lean is kaizen, meaning “change for the better”. The idea behind kaizen is to examine inefficient processes or recurring tasks and make small, incremental improvements over time. An important aspect of kaizen is to document your process and measure it over time to see if changes achieve the intended result.

Lean Maintenance Tools and Techniques

There are several tools and techniques maintenance teams utilize to support a lean manufacturing approach.

Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) Software

Many maintenance organizations still rely on manual maintenance tracking systems to manage their maintenance operations. These outdated systems are simply too cumbersome and ineffective for managing today’s complex maintenance needs.

A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS)  is a centralized platform for documenting, managing, and tracking maintenance activities. It provides you with real-time access to important maintenance information, allowing you to increase your productivity and efficiency. Automated features reduce the burden of managing day-to-day administrative tasks related to work order management, maintenance planning and scheduling, asset management, and other aspects of your maintenance operation.

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)

Total productive maintenance (TPM) is a system of maximizing asset availability by taking an organization-wide approach to maintenance. One of the main pillars of TPM is autonomous maintenance, which places the responsibility of performing simple preventive maintenance tasks on machine operators. Doing so increases the operator’s knowledge of their equipment, allowing them to spot and address small issues before they become big problems that cause downtime.

Failure Analysis

Unexpected asset failures result in lost production time. While many organizations simply treat the symptoms of failure in order to return machines to operation, others perform failure analysis to determine how to avoid future failures. There are many methods of failure analysis including:

Though each of these methods varies in complexity, all aim to prevent or mitigate the effects of failure, thereby minimizing interruptions to production.

Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM)

Reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) is a corporate-level, proactive maintenance strategy that determines the most cost-effective maintenance techniques to maximize asset reliability. It considers the inherent design of equipment, taking into account: equipment function and performance standards, functional failures, failure modes, and failure effects. Based on this analysis, organizations then determine the appropriate tasks to eliminate, detect, reduce the frequency of occurrence of, or reduce the impact of each failure.

As its name suggests, RCM is focused on reliability, or reducing the frequency of asset failure. Reliable assets perform their intended function for longer periods of time without failure (so long as they are used under their stated operating conditions). RCM reduces lost production time caused by unexpected failures and waiting for maintenance to make repairs.

Predictive Maintenance (PdM)

Predictive maintenance (PdM) is a maintenance technique that forecasts when assets will fail by analyzing real-time and historical asset performance data. Compared to preventive maintenance, which is performed according to set intervals, predictive maintenance allows maintenance to be scheduled and performed only when it is truly needed. As a result, the maintenance team can sharply reduce unscheduled downtime and the severity of failures, when they do occur. This leads to optimal availability, reliability, and production capacity.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) helps you determine whether changes to your maintenance process are having the desired impact. The metrics you track depend largely on what’s important to your organization, the process you are trying to optimize, and the type of waste you seek to eliminate. Common lean maintenance KPIs include:

Explore our collection of maintenance KPI articles:

Maximize the Efficiency of Your Maintenance Process with FTMaintenance Select

The main goal of lean manufacturing is to eliminate waste from the production process, which relies on the competence of the maintenance team. Using a CMMS like FTMaintenance Select is one of the best ways to create an efficient, mobilized, and connected maintenance team that supports lean initiatives. By automating essential tasks related to work order management, asset management, inventory management, and more, FTMaintenance Select empowers you to eliminate waste and make maintenance management easy. Request a demo today to learn more.

Minimizing Asset Downtime with CMMS-Assisted Troubleshooting

Posted: 8/5/2020

Technician inspecting machine to gather information and identify potential problems to troubleshoot.

Equipment breakdowns are costly. In fact, in the automotive industry, a single minute of downtime can cost as much as $3,000,000 an hour! Not only do breakdowns take time and money to fix, but they bring production to a standstill, forcing workers to stop what they’re doing until assets can be returned to service. That’s why troubleshooting is one of the most important skills a maintenance professional can have.

What is Troubleshooting?

Troubleshooting is a systematic problem-solving approach used to identify asset failures and corrects faults to return assets to working order. Based on the symptoms of a malfunction or failure, technicians can follow a set of steps to determine or resolve the problem. Troubleshooting is very closely related to Root Cause Analysis (RCA), although RCA is typically conducted when a more formal approach is needed to assess failures.

Why Troubleshooting Matters in Maintenance

Properly maintained equipment is integral to the function of any organization. As much as maintenance teams try to reduce unplanned downtime, it is impossible to completely eliminate it. Even with a comprehensive preventive maintenance program in place, some asset failures simply cannot be avoided. When unexpected failures do happen, the maintenance team must address problems quickly.

However, troubleshooting experience can only be gained when assets break down. So how can maintenance personnel hone their skills without causing excessive downtime? While there is no substitute for experience, using a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) accelerates the troubleshooting process by making it easier for maintenance personnel to access the information necessary to quickly identify the cause of failures and how to fix them.

The next section describes how CMMS can be used at each stage of the troubleshooting process.

Troubleshooting with a CMMS

Before actual troubleshooting can begin, the maintenance team must be made aware of the problem. Maintenance needs are typically reported via a phone call, email, text, or in person. Receiving requests through multiple channels means that requests are likely to get lost or misunderstood, and causes unnecessary complexity for maintenance staff.

Instead, it is preferable to use the maintenance request system included with CMMS solutions like FTMaintenance. A maintenance request system streamlines the request process by providing a single channel for managing and addressing incoming maintenance requests. It allows non-maintenance staff to use their mobile devices to submit work requests immediately and directly to the maintenance team using an online submission form.

Gathering Information

Young male technician troubleshooting machine to gather information and identify problems.

To effectively troubleshoot a problem, it is important to have as much relevant information as possible at your fingertips. Working with insufficient or inaccurate information can lead to the wrong conclusions, and delay a solution.

A technician needs to gather contextual information from multiple sources. The most obvious source of information is the operator who requested assistance. Operators and production staff are most familiar with the situation and can provide primary details including the indicators of the problem (such as a change in asset performance or product quality), how the problem was discovered, and the conditions that led to the problem.

A technician should also observe the problem first hand, noting any unusual symptoms or abnormal behavior. Failure codes displayed on human-machine interfaces (HMIs) or alarms from the production machine or control devices, like a PLC, can help identify what is going wrong.

The most comprehensive resource for technicians is a CMMS. A CMMS provides an efficient method for communication between those who report problems and the technicians who must resolve them.  A complete maintenance history stored in a CMMS allows technicians to see similar past failures and view the history of problems and repairs leading up to the current breakdown.

Depending on the amount of information gathered, technicians may be able to do some troubleshooting before arriving on scene. A CMMS serves as a digital library of maintenance documentation, such as owner’s manuals, breakdown schematics, and maintenance troubleshooting guides. Information is accessed on demand so that no time is wasted rifling through file cabinets or tracking down hard copies of manuals.

Analyzing Information and Formulating a Solution

Enough information should be gathered at this point for a technician to have an idea of what may be causing the issue and to formulate a plan to fix the problem. If the problem has occurred before, the maintenance history can be used to identify what parts and tools were used in the past to complete a similar repair.

The CMMS then tells the technician if the necessary parts are in stock and where they can be found. If out of stock, the CMMS can be used to quickly access vendor contact information for ordering and generating purchase orders. Maintenance history will also outline the corrective steps taken on past repairs, helping the technician better prepare for the job.

Performing the Repair

Before the repair is started, the technician should be familiar with any safety rules and procedures for working on the asset. A CMMS provides technicians with crucial safety information, such as what safety gear is needed and what lockout/tagout procedures must be followed. Safety-related tasks can also be included directly on work orders. If specialized knowledge or skills are needed to complete the repair, the CMMS can also help identify which employees are best suited to lend a hand.

Once the asset is in a safe state, the repair can be completed. During a repair, a technician may discover additional issues that weren’t revealed earlier. In this case, more information gathering may be needed. Instead of going back to an office or computer terminal, the technician can access the CMMS using a mobile device. This puts maintenance information in the palm of the technician’s hand, saving time running back and forth. A mobile device can also be used to log any newly discovered information and upload multimedia files, such as pictures and videos, which can provide additional context to the situation.

Testing the Solution

Young male technician pushing start button on a machine after troubleshooting to test his solution.

Once the repair is completed, the technician or production team will verify the results. Typically, this is done at a reduced speed or with reduced output. If all goes well, the equipment can be run in full production mode. During this stage, the technician should continue to observe the asset. If the problem persists, another solution must be tried and tested. Any further interventions should be noted in the CMMS on work orders, in description areas, or through attached documentation.

Documenting the Solution

A critical troubleshooting step is documentation of the resources (i.e., labor, material, time) and steps used to resolve the problem. Detailed documentation creates a valuable reference for future troubleshooting if the same problem happens again. Documentation is done on the work order during – or shortly after – the repair is complete.

A good CMMS makes this process easy. A CMMS uses this information to build an asset’s maintenance history, where it is available for in-depth analysis and key performance indicator (KPI) reports.

Preventing Future Problems

Follow-up should be done once equipment is back up and running. Any recommendations made or precautions taken following a breakdown may prevent the failure from happening again – or at the very least, reduce the number of times it occurs.

CMMS software makes follow-up activities easy. For example, tweaks to a preventive maintenance (PM) schedule can be done in a matter of seconds. Changes to a work order’s tasks are automatically applied to future work orders. If new parts were used for a repair, or a new vendor supplied parts, they can be documented and tracked in the software. When it comes time to reorder, inventory and vendor records are available at a moment’s notice.

Improve Troubleshooting with FTMaintenance

Asset downtime is costly for manufacturers. The maintenance team’s ability to effectively troubleshoot breakdowns is critical for keeping production going. However, maintenance troubleshooting takes time to master. FTMaintenance facilitates effective troubleshooting by centralizing repair history and maintenance documentation, providing technicians with a single system from which they can quickly access the information they need to keep assets up and running. Schedule your demo today to learn more about how FTMaintenance can minimize your asset downtime.