QMSC Cloud-based Equipment Maintenance

Whether you’re in the regulated industry or not, asset and equipment maintenance is a big deal for every organization in the manufacturing sector.

 

The case for a rigorous, and robust maintenance program should be obvious. However, top management of some organizations often questions why asset and equipment maintenance should be part of a quality program. In the past, management standards focused only on product quality. With increasing sophistication and complexity in industry, business experts have recognized that overall business performance impacts a customer’s experience. This is easily seen in the balance of quality, cost, and delivery. This well-established management principle states that overly focusing on one dimension will adversely affect the other two, thus resulting in a poor customer experience.

 

Recently, many management standards have been revised in to clarify that organizational process quality is the intent of the standard, and that product quality is only one part of that. In other words, there is a measurable value to quality, delivery, and cost which must be considered to remain competitive in the marketplace. In the case of equipment maintenance programs, the justification is to prevent or reduce the impact on the client or customer due to unplanned maintenance. The cost of poor quality as it relates to asset management can be generally addressed by one, some, or even all the following:

 

• Cost of extra material used

• Cost of extra utilities

• Cost of labor to fix the problem

• Cost of lost opportunity

• Engineering change orders

• Expediting

• Late delivery

• Long cycle time

• Loss of sales/revenue (profit margin)

• Lost customer loyalty

• Lower service level to customers/consumers

• More setups

• The potential loss of market share

• Retooling

• Rework

• Scrap

• Slow or interrupted processes

 

Deferred maintenance or missed maintenance can be a root cause of all of these.

 

Nobody wants to tell the top customer that a rush order for which he or she paid expediting fees will be delayed because maintenance was forgotten on a key piece of production equipment. Or in extreme cases, that the product was scrapped.

Aerospace and automotive manufacturing have unique requirements for maintenance. Both industries generally operate on just-in-time manufacturing principles, although aerospace tends to be longer lead time items. With these business models, maintenance becomes a critical process. However, both industries approach the same problem differently.

 

IATF 16949 was published in 2016 to replace ISO/TS16949. One key change from the ISO/TS16949 is the requirements relating to maintenance.

 

Preventative maintenance, predictive maintenance, and unplanned maintenance have been around for decades. What was novel for the automotive industry is the way that total productive maintenance was addressed in the new standard? Total productive maintenance relates to the day-to-day activities performed by anyone on the production team to ensure uninterrupted operation of mission-critical equipment. Things like fuses, belts or chain inspections, filter cartridge replacements, checking lubrication and even cleanliness all fall into the category of total productive maintenance when maintenance is performed by a production employee. Many manufacturing companies have had production personnel performing these activities for years. However, the impact to productivity is just now being realized due to the necessity of documenting what is actually accomplished by production personnel.

 

In aerospace, extensive planning is performed to ensure the right components come together at the correct time on the assembly line. Failure to accomplish this can result in a cascade effect where the assembly is halted or worse yet, the aircraft delivery is delayed. Maintenance of equipment performing special processes such as high precision machining, forming, or heat treating is critical to prevent costly and sometimes very public missed delivery deadlines. No supplier wants to be the squeaky wheel getting attention in these cases!

For organizations who aren’t in a highly regulated industry: All businesses face the same financial and resource strains, regardless of industry. If we go back to the list of the cost of poor quality, we can see the impact that a poorly managed maintenance program has. The goal of your maintenance program is to reduce cost, maximize productivity, and to give you the freedom to determine when equipment is maintained, rather than not knowing when it will fail.

 

 

Maintenance Process Challenges

 

 

Hybrid and Redundant Processes: Organizations which paper-based, or paper and excel tracking style systems observe support costs increase, redundant work, increased overhead and personnel performing non-essential tasks to document activities for compliance purposes. The result is an inefficient maintenance management process which does not fully meet the intent of management standards.

Robust maintenance programs are dependent on the reliability of task creation and reminders. Even a moderate-sized operation such as a heat-treating facility or a machine shop requires dedicated maintenance personnel to keep everything running reliably. A maintenance manager may find him or herself consumed with issuing preventative maintenance and repair work order assignments. Then the tickets still have to be closed, spreadsheets updated and records filed by administrative personnel.

 

 

 

Equipment Maintenance Software Solution

 

 

 

Ubiquity: Cloud-based and available anywhere with a web or mobile network connection, equipment maintenance software is a part of the is bug data powered. Our user optimized, enterprise-grade software is flexible to meets the needs of all organizations regardless of scales. From single-site companies to global multi-facility corporations, we simplify maintenance requests, task assignment, and ensure records are compliant with applicable requirements.

Automated preventative maintenance is issued regularly to a team or to an individual. Tasks can be closed out on a mobile device as completed. Production personnel can request repair work from a mobile device or desktop computers. Notifications to management alert of downed equipment. Automatic assignment to maintenance techs can be configured for immediate dispatch. This eliminates bottlenecks and ensures maximum uptime. QMSC software can optimize your predictive maintenance plans when the system detects opportunities for improvement.

 

We equip organizations to drive meaningful and sustainable positive change through simplifying compliance to a quality program. Our maintenance management solution helps you achieve lower operating costs, improved uptime, all while ensuring compliance.

 

See the below use cases to learn how QMSC equips every employee in the maintenance process to ensure maximum productivity up-time.