Maintaining future assets

It seems as though industry has been concerned with cost-cutting for most of the past decade, and with the slowness of recovery from recession and the continued uncertainties on what the long-term future holds for UK manufacturing, the need for savings has been thrust into the spotlight perhaps more than ever before.

Maintaining assets and maximising productivity have become essential as companies seek to ensure profits. With the greater focus on environmental issues in recent years, efficient maintenance has also become a method not only to improve turnover, but also to avoid the penalties for non-compliance with new legislation.

The days when companies would employ reactive tactics - running a component at maximum output until the next planned shutdown, when it would be checked and either repaired or replaced - are becoming a thing of the past.

Overworked

Previously, economic constraints led to equipment being run into the ground, the notion being to get the maximum life from a component before replacing it. It seemed logical, but this approach would more often than not be a false economy. Running equipment to failure usually means it is running below its maximum efficiency, which affects production rates and probably increases energy consumption. Ironically, when the unit inevitably breaks down, the cost of the replacement would probably have been recouped through reductions in energy consumption and restoration of full production.

With the need to run plant for longer periods to avoid the costs associated with downtime, more and more companies are now moving toward a maintenance strategy. For a while this was the reserve of a few key industry players, but now maintenance strategies have started to be developed by SMEs. However, a maintenance strategy is about far more than developing a calendar of shutdowns and checking the condition of the plant in the meantime, it's about asset management - developing a strategy to predict and prevent problems so as to maximise longevity, efficiency and thereby increase uptime and output.

Maximising efficient production is part of reducing energy consumption and emissions control to boost the so-called 'triple bottom line' (social and environmental as well as financial responsibility). The government's pledge to reduce carbon emissions by 12.5 per cent below 1990 levels, leading to the introduction of the Climate Change Levy and the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control legislation, has made this more important than ever. Both pieces of legislation provide incentives for industry to meet targets for efficient operation, aside from the immediate cost-savings that come from reducing energy consumption.

Pump priming

Yet despite industry's great effort to develop a maintenance strategy for manufacturing plant, there are still some specifics that seem to be overlooked. From pump and fluid sealing specialist Precision Sealing's experience, this is often the case with pumps which industry fails time and time again to recognise as essential components, thereby undoing so much of the potential an effective strategy can bring.

Despite often fulfilling a fairly rudimentary function within a plant (transporting a substance from A to B), pumps are responsible for nearly 20 per cent of the world's electrical energy demand and can account for up to 50 per cent of the energy usage in a single plant operation. Applications are widespread in industries as diverse as petrochemical, food processing, pharmaceutical and many more, yet despite this, knowledge of these vital components is poor and they're rarely the object of regular maintenance.

This fact is made all the more surprising when it's considered that the ramifications of a faulty pump extend beyond interruption to production and energy consumption as far as the emission of potentially harmful substances, which could contravene laws on the release of substances and lead to, at least, prosecution and, at worst, serious health and safety concerns.

With such considerations, to not appreciate the importance of pumps is a major failure within an effective maintenance strategy. Such failures could be easily overcome by making sure that the maintenance strategy encompasses all components within manufacturing plant. Interestingly however, these problems associated with pumps bring into focus an essential factor of any maintenance strategy - making the best use of skills to get the best out of the plant. Never more is this the case than when sensitive or complicated components are involved.

Even with government initiatives such as Action Energy - which aims to give free advice on potential energy savings - pumps remain difficult components to set-up so as to achieve best efficiency, a skill that many companies are unlikely to have in-house. And with many maintenance teams under enormous pressure to keep plant running efficiently there is an advantage to be had in outsourcing maintenance work to specialist companies. The maintenance team can concentrate on elements such as the building itself, security, utilities and so on, while the maintenance of plant used in the manufacturing process can be handled by a company or companies with specialist expertise. Employing an outside expert to fulfil certain maintenance requirements can bring considerable time, energy and cost savings by helping to maintain efficient operation and maximise productivity.

Rise in outsourcing

This has led some companies, Precision Sealing among them, to develop preventative maintenance programmes or healthcare packages in their particular specialist field, enabling industry to buy-in expertise as part of their maintenance strategy.

Already the offshore industry is almost wholly dependent on outsourcing and there are encouraging signs that manufacturing is moving in the same direction. The benefits of working with specialist contractors like Precision Sealing are now being recognised more widely. Outsourcing maintenance of manufacturing production facilities has grown from about five per cent to some 30 per cent in the last ten years.

Furthermore, by employing out-sourced expertise it follows that a maintenance programme can be more attuned to your company's individual needs as the out-sourced 'expert' can help identify risks and priorities that a more general 'one size fits all' approach could overlook. Again, this helps to ensure the best possible maintenance of the plant and more efficient operation and output.

Above all, with the shadow of recession still looming and investment looking uncertain, the goal must be to maximise the potential of assets either with or without out-sourcing. Maintenance is not an insurance policy - handled correctly it will pay dividends, handled badly it will incur costs. An effective maintenance plan - making the most of plant and skills - can bring substantial gains by maximising efficiency and productivity, and impact directly on what must be the fundamental objective for any plant operator; improving the bottom line.

Ian Robinson is marketing and sales director of pump and fluid sealing specialist Precision Sealing