Developing a strategy for effective plant maintenance
When forecasting next year's maintenance budget, do you just add a certain percentage to this year's budget? This article explains how you can develop a maintenance strategy that not only keeps your plant running but can also cut maintenance costs. Sections discuss typical symptoms of poor maintenance management, current maintenance concepts, and steps in developing an effective maintenance strategy.
As a plant manager or supervisor, you know that maintaining a dry solids processing plant is expensive. Material and labor costs are steadily rising, and as your production equipment gets older, it requires more maintenance. Although new automated equipment can increase your plant's production capacity, it requires a large capital investment, which makes the equipment's downtime much more costly. Automated equipment also requires highly trained workers and a stock of expensive electrical components. As a result, the cost of maintaining your plant's equipment can be 20 to 25 percent of the plant's total operating costs -- or as much as 30 to 35 percent of the plant's truly controllable costs.