Modern industries have closely associated themselves with Continuous Improvement throughout the last decade and are further looking into newer areas to incorporate CI. This is aligned with every industry’s improvement model and its sole objective of increasing productivity and revenues through continuous improvement models.
Industries are going through a very competitive scenario where every enterprise has multiple competitors fighting to gain market superiority. In such circumstances, it is imperative to keep improving quality and costs. It must be done regularly and continuously.
It is where CI plays such an integral part in the flourish of every industry. Modern-day industries have managed to inculcate an increasing number of CI techniques in an attempt to improve their production and distribution processes. This process has worked well for many enterprises so far. Yet there appears to be a particular quality gap when it comes to maintenance procedures. Support and maintenance processes seem to be bereft of the benefits of CI. This needs to change fast for the overall betterment of the industries.
Why must maintenance processes be made an integral part of CI?
Every industry has a sole objective to increase production, which in turn requires a high uptime of the concerning pieces of equipment. This is where support and maintenance teams play a significant part. Whatever be the equipment, it cannot run 24×7 without any glitches. They are bound to face roadblocks, which are then handled by support teams now and then.
If organizations can systematically improve their general maintenance procedures, then the health of the pieces of equipment and the processes will always be at the desired level. Maintenance activities, therefore, should become an integral part of Continuous Improvement.
How to integrate Maintenance with CI?
Industries need to introduce more condition-based maintenance, aided by predictive strategies and top tier technologies. The market is enriched with numerous cutting-edge tech, and companies need to bring them in the fold to optimize their maintenance activities. One such initiative can be CMMS. This will not only help the maintenance team perform their task better but also reduce operating costs and open up a wide area of opportunities for the enterprises.
Taking up Lean Six Sigma projects to improve equipment uptime can be another great initiative. FMEA (Failure Mode and Effect Analysis) can be effectively sued for designing preventive maintenance program.
Continuous stratification and evaluation of the maintenance activities are very crucial for continuously improving support and maintenance sectors.
Implementing regularly evaluated plans and subsequent actions and checking if it functions well within the maintenance flow, whether or not it is genuinely enhancing it, is also indispensable.
Regular assessment of the periodic developments aided by proper feedback from the maintenance personnel is required. The feedback aspect is fundamental in future decision making that would influence and invoke further CI models into the maintenance.
Conclusion
Predictive analysis, ably supported by modern technology, has benefitted industries a lot in continuously improving their processes. They need to shift their focus into the maintenance activities and implement CI models in support activities as well. This would undoubtedly lead to ascertain maximum uptime, leading to enhanced asset utilization.