Preventive Maintenance

Covaris will develop an accurate asset register and a logical asset hierarchy though filed validation of your assets. Prior to asset validation, a maser data standard will be created for you which will include the asset information standard (data that needs to be captured), an asset classification schema, and an asset hierarchy standard. The filed data collection will be calibrated based on the master data standard. The field asset data validation process is underpinned by web and mobile (offline capable) technology that allows us to provide a service with high speed and efficiency, high field data quality and is at a low cost to you.

Asset Criticality Analysis (ACA) is a systematic procedure for the analysis of a system of assets. The aim is to identify the consequence and likelihood of failure of an asset to perform its function.  The results of the asset critically analysis will be used to develop an appropriate and cost effective maintenance strategy to manage organisational risk. This process also enables you to optimise your maintenance strategies based on your risk vs cost appetite.

Where high criticality assets are identified from the Asset Criticality Assessment, we may recommend that a in-depth Failure mode, effects and criticality analysis is undertaken. We use this method sparingly as it increases the cost of maintenance strategy development. FMECA is a systematic procedure for the analysis of a system of assets to identify the potential failure modes, their causes and effects on system performance (performance of the immediate assembly and the entire system or a process) within the scope of the analysis and develop mitigation strategies. The purpose of the FMECA is to advise improvement to in-service asset care both through the preventive maintenance strategy and the approach to operator care. It may also advise on possible design opportunities where intractable loss of performance may be designed out with new equipment replacing existing plant and systems.

Once we have the asset register and hierarchy developed, asset criticality and FMECA (for high criticality plant) we develop optimised preventive maintenance strategies for asset classes/ types.  These are PM procedures that specify a range of tasks (job plan) for a specific type of maintainable item. The maintenance strategy set will be consequently allocated to many incidents of the same type of equipment across the site.

All of our PM procedures are developed and documented using our software for PM development which ensures a consistent format and provides speed in development. Covaris has thousands of procedures generated over 15 + years that we use to increase the speed of development. In developing the PM procedures we generally use the following source streams :

1. Your Existing PMs – we respect the experience and what people have developed over time, we validate and do not re-invent the wheel;
2. Our Existing PMs developed over years for various maintainable items – we use our database of thousands of individual job plans which have been proven in multiple industries supported by our PM Sure software designed for delivering quality PM strategies;
3. Vendor PMs – these are found in manuals provided by the supplier of equipment. Our experience is that while the frequencies are conservative and can be modified, the content of the procedures are not conservative. They have been formed from design knowledge of the failure modes within the plant and are normally prudent; and
4. Field developed PMs which require a formal FMEA process with the maintainers leading to the individual development of the PM procedure suitable for high criticality equipment or unusual or rare kind of machine or system.

A maintenance procedure must describe what has to be done but not how to do it. It is important that the competency of the trades staff is respected and taken into account so that the procedures can be used as simple check lists rather than cumbersome and difficult to read documents, that may well be ignored by the trades person. What has to be done means that the following is covered:

1. Items to be lubricated are listed and specification of the lubricant is provided
2. When checks are to be made, the upper and lower limits of acceptability are provided – this is particularly important for electrical checks
3.  The difference between a check and an inspection is that an inspection means that a measurement has to be recorded – a check means that the trades person views something to ascertain whether it is OK or not. Hence if an inspection is required ensure that an inspection sheet is provided as part of the procedure
4. If alignment or balancing or similar work is required, then nominated points of measurement have to be provided, possibly requiring the trades person to write down clearances or dial readings on an inspection sheet
5. Tasks that need to be performed based on standards and legislative / regulatory requirements.

Additional or supplementary information on procedures should include:

1. List of materials that may be used in the procedure – this is called the Bill of Materials and should include the name of a spare part, the stock code and the Manufacturer. Possibly also the Manufacturer’s item identifier code should be listed as well.
2. Access requirements – this is particularly important for isolations but may also include what has to be done to access a building (eg security requirements), or if other equipment has to be removed or isolated first
3. Documentation – drawing numbers, software version numbers, where manuals are located, etc
4. Consumables – these are not items to be included in the Bill of Materials but are purchased material that may be used. This would include all lubricants and any disposable items.

All PMs were validated in a controlled process with members of your maintenance team in a process called Acceptance into Service. Acceptance means that the maintenance team certifies:

• The procedures are well written and can be understood;
• The procedures are clear and can be simply implemented;
• The team believes the procedures are effective and necessary; and
• The team believes the nominated time and resources to do the work are valid.

The preventive maintenance schedule is the assignment of each PM procedure to the maintenance items (assets). For example, a 1 monthly electrical procedure for a 10-15 Hp electric motor strategy will be assigned to all the 10-15 Hp electric motor assets. For each assignment, a work order will be generated by the asset management information systems (e.g .SAP, MAXIMO, MEX, Mainpac) at the specified frequency. Often specific routes are generated covering multiple equipment items in order to gain resource efficiency. In the case where PM procedures are created as routes, the asset management information system may generate a single work order with multiple assets listed on the work order. In this case PM tasks need to be completed for each asset in the list instead of multiple work orders being generated for each asset.

A key analysis of the PM schedule is the statement of labour hours required for different craft types per week, and how much work is on running and non-running equipment. Resource analysis is undertaken and smoothed for capacity based on capacity of your resource labour hours. This ensures the PM schedule is balanced for resources and provide maximum possible operation of the plant with avoidance of unnecessary planned downtime. Some of the PM work may be allocated to shutdowns as standard work packs. In such case the scheduling of this work is to an outage period.

The PM schedule is the final output of this entire process. The steps in the process were undertaken in order to ensure that the PM schedule:

• Covers all plant to be maintained using a PM strategy;
• The right PM tactic is deployed to address known failure modes on the target equipment;
• Equipment is made available for PM work either in a running state (eg for condition monitoring) or stopped state (ie isolated);
• A schedule is available to provide monthly warning in advance of the work to be done so that resources and parts can be made available; and
• The right resources will be working on the right job.

We will export the preventive maintenance master data in any format required for upload by your IT department. In past projects, we work with the IT department and their bulk upload tools or spreadsheets and export the data to fit with their existing processes. Covaris has experience with most contemporary EAM, CMMS, ERP systems (e.g. MAXIMO, SAP, MAINPAC, MEX) and the data structures and nuances that are required by individual systems. This includes load up of PM strategies, PM procedures (job plans), schedule/routes etc.