“How To” Maintain Capital Equipment
Friday, July 25th, 2008
In asset-intensive industries like oil & gas, energy & utilities, mining and transportation, capital equipment downtime can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per day. One of the primary challenges to keeping assets up and running is the daunting complexity and various configurations of the equipment: maintenance planners and service technicians must reference enormous volumes of documentation, some of which is spread across multiple locations; some in paper form, others in online databases.
Many companies in asset-intensive industries have made substantial investments in Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) systems or Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS). While these systems can have a wide range of capabilities, broadly speaking they try to improve maintenance planning by indicating what to do and when to do it. This often includes job scheduling and assignment, preventive maintenance (PM), inventory control, and other activities associated with asset availability, reliability and operational safety.
Largely beyond the scope of EAM/CMMS applications is direct support for how to perform maintenance activities—particularly unplanned maintenance activities—in the field. While some EAM systems can generate work orders, and perhaps material lists for various maintenance tasks, the primary purpose of these systems is to support the maintenance planner, not the mechanic.
That’s where Enigma’s technology comes into play, because it delivers the how to content as a fully integrated maintenance solution: fault isolation/troubleshooting manuals (how to diagnose), service manuals (how to repair), service bulletins (how to incorporate the latest procedures), parts catalogs (how to find the proper parts) and collaboration (how to share maintenance history/experience). Improving the efficiency of mechanics has a major impact on reducing asset downtime and thus on bottom-line profitability and competitiveness; it’s common sense to increase the value of EAM by integrating Enigma into the equation. In future blog posts we’ll provide specific examples that show companies how to further leverage EAM/CMMS investments.
