A Criticality Assessment (CA) is a fundamental step to any risk-based asset management strategy. It permits a risk managed approach to maintenance task selection, allowing resources to be focused more cost effectively. We complete the CA by breaking down machines to their least replaceable assemblies and scoring them against a matrix that is aligned to your business strategy. Maintenance task selection is also completed against all functions to support development of CBM and PM documents.

Before any Capex expenditure take place it is best practice to carry out a life cycle cost review before awarding a contract. This is important because at the point of commissioning, 70% of the ongoing “life” costs are decide, this figure will dwarf the initial project costs and should not be forgotten. The biggest issue is the cultural ways of working within the teams. Project teams are measured on their capital spend, reliability on the maintenance and energy costs, and operations on hygiene, consumables and operating costs. Currently a lot of businesses work in Silos when it come to the decision making of asset Life Cycle Cost (LCC) analysis. 53North has developed a process to evaluate an assets LCC and have the experience to support you creating engaging communications to start to change that culture.

Considerations for LCC

• Costs for penalisation: Downtime, opportunity losses/deferred production, production losses (unavailability), operational losses, impact in the quality, impact in security and environment.
• Costs for corrective maintenance: Manpower, direct costs related with the manpower (own or hired) in the event of a non-planned action; and materials and replacement parts, direct costs related with the consumable parts and the replacements used in the event of an unplanned action.
• Cost for Maintenance: indirect and direct labour costs, overhaul costs, spares costs for planned replacements, stores holding costs, etc
• Cost for operation: Energy cost for running of the asset, consumable cost, operational direct labour costs, etc

53 Asset Care Templates (ACT) Instructions serve as an interconnected web of tools and practices that involve both reliability, engineering and lean principles at its core to improve plant performance.

ACTs help improve the effectiveness and efficiency of maintenance and operational functions. The templates are designed for online maintenance, therefore increasing line availability and shortening the requirements for maintenance windows. They also help serve real world applications, even for complex equipment by using the correct mix of engineering, process, reliability, and lean techniques. Reverse Engineering Principles (REP) are incorporated within the template to improve product quality and enhance change over efficiency using defined standards. This introduction naturally moves people into a ‘total asset care’ mentality, therefore improving asset longevity as well as an improvement in performance with up-skilling through a defined procedure.

53North can use the RCM framework to support building a maintenance package for safety, environmental or critical process items. The process ensures that the system continues to perform to the user’s requirements in its present operating context. 53North can carry out the process to completion or facilitate an onsite team.

Decision Making Grids (DMG) are used for decision support in the continuous improvement environment. It is normal for a manufacturing site to have data collected in a CMMS system or machine database, but data does not improve the effectiveness of assets. The data needs to be used in a decision support system to enable the identification and prioritisation of improvement actions to be taken. The DMG model can facilitate the prioritisation of the assets using the two main drivers of equipment availability, downtime in minutes and the frequency of failure. Not only does the model prioritise the assets but it also recommends which maintenance activities should be improved or carried out. The DMG model itself is basically a map that the worst performing assets are positioned on to, depending where the asset sits on the map, determines what the maintenance recommendation is.

To make our clients world class competitors, 53North provide asset care and autonomous maintenance (AM) pillars for operational excellence.

The 53North approach is to support business in a move from offline to online asset care, with the introduction of technology and science but in a practical and cost effective way.  The 53North approach allows for some artificial intelligence and removes the need for downtime and reduces paperwork with electronically controlled systems that provide a date and time stamp of asset care activity.  Therefore, operational maintenance supports reductions in micro and macro stoppages, introduces live measurement to provide known datums, improves standards for inspection, improves problem solving time and maintenance responses when components start to wear.

Therefore, site can better enable operators to concentrate on operating production equipment but with a peace of mind that online intelligence is in place to support asset care.

Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) is an approach used to identify all possible failure modes of a function, component, asset or system. 53North have developed decision criteria to ensure the correct strategy is used to remove or mitigate the identified failure modes. An FMEA is usually performed on highly critical functions as identified by the CA.

53North have developed a maintainability review process to assess the ease and speed with which assets can be restored to operational running after a failure has occurred. The review can take place at a blueprint stage of a project to enable changes to the infrastructure, buildings and assets within the design. The review also incorporates technical skills and equipment gap analysis.

53North have developed a pragmatic process to reduce the inventory value without jeopardising maintainability. Stores spare parts has a stock value that effects the bottom line of the business. 53North’s risk-based process optimises stock levels considering production requirements using statistical methods. A value-added service can also be completed, like linking parts to the bill of materials (BOM) of an asset within the CMMS system to ensure spares can be found easily and quickly. Also, identifying gaps in naming conventions and part information as well as implementing and standardising stores and procurement procedures.