Shifting to a predictive asset maintenance management strategy will help your organization reduce downtime and cut costs. In the maintenance world, an “asset” typically refers to machinery or equipment that helps your company achieve its goals. However, assets can also include items like vehicles, tools, and buildings.
By improving the reliability and lifespan of your assets, your facility will reduce costs and increase productivity. This article covers the basics of successfully managing asset maintenance and achieving optimal asset performance.
Why Is Asset Maintenance Management Important?
An effective asset maintenance plan is key to minimizing downtime and ensuring your company continues to operate smoothly. Asset maintenance involves carrying out regular inspections, calibrations, troubleshooting, and repairs on assets – ideally before they break down.
The best asset maintenance strategies also track other components that mission-critical assets depend on, such as spare parts. For instance, if you can identify a fatigued bearing before it fails, you can locate a replacement bearing and schedule installation before a catastrophic failure or facility-wide shutdown occurs.
Other factors to consider to help your organization optimize its asset maintenance strategy include:
- Asset criticality: Is this piece of equipment vital to the success of the facility? If so, any necessary maintenance should be prioritized.
- Workforce and training requirements: It’s important to track schedules and ensure the right people for the right job are available at the right time.
- Cost, time, and resource constraints: By collecting data via electronic sensors, maintenance teams can free up more time for preventive work.
Why Is Asset Performance Data Critical to Success?
A preventive (or predictive) asset maintenance plan is much less costly than a corrective maintenance approach, as it results in far less downtime and a significant increase in productivity.
In a recent study by the Deloitte Analytics Institute, researchers found, “On average, predictive maintenance increases productivity by 25%, reduces breakdowns by 70%, and lowers maintenance costs by 25%.”
This study confirms what successful maintenance teams already know: Identifying and addressing problems early on is key to making sure they don’t snowball into larger issues.
Having data that describes exactly how your assets are performing is the best way to predict and prevent future breakdowns. That’s why most teams today turn to predictive maintenance strategies, like deploying condition monitoring sensors and software to help them monitor the health of assets in real-time.
Tracking Asset Performance with Management Software
Successfully managing assets comes down to one thing: tracking. Effectively tracking the maintenance history of assets will give you the data-driven insights you need to help your maintenance team reduce costs and prevent asset failure.
However, manually tracking assets, as was done in the past, is both a time-consuming and costly endeavor. Manual record-keeping can also lead to data gaps that prevent your maintenance team from identifying and correcting minor issues before they become major problems. That’s why most modern organizations today rely on asset management software like eMaint – often paired with high-tech sensors like Fluke 3563 Wireless Vibration Sensors – to help them effortlessly monitor the health of their assets.
With eMaint Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) software, you can seamlessly track and report on the vital signs of your most critical assets. This powerful software will help your asset maintenance team catch potential failures before they cause costly damage or unplanned downtime.
And with all key asset data stored in a single CMMS, your maintenance team can easily turn that data into actionable insights. Plus, thanks to supplemental technologies such as cloud storage, condition monitoring sensors, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality, CMMS software like eMaint makes it easy for maintenance teams of all sizes to get the most out of their assets.
Don’t wait, get eMaint to easily manage your company’s asset maintenance today.