Published on Jan 10, 2016
In an industry, cost of unscheduled stoppage of an equipment is very high, in terms of loss of production and money. Maintenance is an activity carried out to avoid unscheduled stoppages and breakdowns of the equipment, to improve availability and life of plant and machineries, thereby improving the performance of the industry. The effectiveness of production is highly dependent on quality of maintenance.
One of the key factor for the success of an industry is an effective maintenance management system.
Proper maintenance management can improve existing capacity utilization rather than going in for additional capacities to meet the ever increasing demand of a large number of products and services.
Maintenance is only viewed as a repair function, however it is a combination of any actions carried out to retain an item in or restore it to an acceptance condition.
The principal objectives of maintenance activity are:
1. To maximise the availability and reliability of all assets (equipment, machinery)
2. To extend the useful life of assets by minimising wear and tear and deterioration.
3. To ensure operation readiness of all equipments required for emergency use at all times.
4. To ensure the safety of personnel/using facility.
The availability (A) of a plant can be defined as:
A = Tup / Tup + Tdown
Tup = The cumulative time of operation in the normal working state
T down = The cumulative downtime.
Reliability - The probability that a unit will function normally when used according to specified conditions for at least a stated period of time.
Maintainabilty - The probability that a failed unit is put back to satisfactory, operable condition in a given down time.
In a changing world of competition the survival of industries depends on quick decision making and effective management of maintenance function. To accomplish the above objective presently "Computer Aided Maintenance Management Software Packages" are available for the maintenance managers.
CAMM System is a reliable tool available to plan effectively complete tasks on schedule and make quick reviews. This can also be treated as part of "ERP" software.
Typical CAMM system provides:
" Decision support for equipment
" Reliability management
" Real time data capture for condition monitoring of equipment
" Work orders management
" Planning spares requirements
" Planning maintenance budgets
" Monitoring of labour productivity
" Comprehensive equipment databases
" Automatic sequencing of inspections
A typical planned maintenance package consists of three modules:
1. Maintenance administration and control
3. Maintenance operations
The Maintenance Administration and control records and maintains plant and policy related master information including information pertaining to basic organisational details. In addition the module facilitates housekeeping of data by allowing purging of excess maintenance related data.
The equipment module maintains master information and the maintenance history of equipment. Details of equipment hierarchies, dependencies, parameters and attached rotatables can be recorded. This module aids analysis and review of maintenance history by providing information from various perspectives.
The maintenance operations module deals with activities related to generation and creation of work requests and work orders and all planning activities. This module also maintains master information about the maintenance activities such as standard tasks, preventive maintenance and so on.
The basic hardware required is a server where all data are stored which is connected to different clients situated in different user sections.
Deals with recording essential information required for usage of CAMM system. The information specified here deals with basic organisational details like shift records, standard pay rates for labour, employee details, etc.
Control module involves the following functions:
i. Work groups – assigns the responsibility of carrying out work orders to work groups.
ii. Resources – has facility to define employee, contract and others (forklift, cranes). For employees carrying out maintenance tasks, employee’s personal details,
hift details, employee cost, overtime costs and skill details are obtained. These details are used for planning and costing of maintenance jobs.
iii. Maintenance period and year – facility to define maintenance years to keep track of maintenance activities (this could differ from financial year).
iv. Location of equipment – Unlimited number of equipment locations for grouping equipment based on geographical, functional or planning attributes.
v. Authorisations – provision to define authorisation codes and associate employees with each code.
o Allows building of a Trouble shooting guide.
o Maintains details of the equipment problems faced by maintenance personnel.
o Allows generation of emergency Work Orders.
o Allows corrective, preventive, predictive and breakdown work orders.
o Facilitates work order Planning and Scheduling.
o Enables work order reviews.
o Maintains details of contract jobs.
It is learnt that the following firms have implemented the CAMM System in their industries: Aaditya Cement, Bharat Earth Movers Ltd., Carborandum Universal, Indian Airlines, JK Industries, Maruthi Udyog Ltd., Parrys’ Confectionery Ltd., Hoosies Energy, USA, Trenergy, Malaysia.etc .The results are found to be excellent and the benefits are enormous. Let us hope that Computer adided Maintenance Management System will help Indian Industries to be cost effective and competitive in the global market by improving the capacity utilisation in the years to come.
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