Increasing efficiency and uptime of plant assets is one of the most important goals of any large and complex manufacturing organization. Any down time has direct impact on the production, revenue, profitability and customer satisfaction. Some of the plants heads like to measure down time in hours and minutes as the cost per hour to the organization could touch a few hundreds of thousands of dollars.

A plant maintenance team typically uses a plethora of software tools for their regular or turnaround management. However, the maintenance process is mired with several challenges which at times increases the downtime by several factors. It is not uncommon to hear that a turnaround process took five to ten days more than the planned timeline, whereas few hours extra can result in significant losses for any organization. Recently one of the plant heads of a large process Industry recounted how their last shutdown event took eighty days instead of planned forty six days. A whopping thirty four days extra. And the goal was not to lose even hours!

Typical reasons for such delays, be it shutdown/turnaround process or regular maintenance as mentioned by several maintenance experts include:
• Poor scope management of the turn around management
• Rudimentary and rigid planning and sequencing of the maintenance work orders
• Untimely availability of spare parts, tools, equipment’s
• Improper assignment of technicians to tasks
• Stale data and lack of transparency and real time information on deviations
• Low wrench time of technicians

Organizations which use rudimentary planning tools or disparate systems for managing assets and planning face several challenges with stale and unreliable data. An integrated planning and execution tool which works within their ERP software can make the complete process extremely smooth. The need is to have an application which can help to have one single view to plan, check availability of technicians or other resources, the critical path during planning and execution of turnaround events, having easy access to designs and manuals, ability to directly request for procurement and blocking, real time information on release of equipment’s which can help in efficient and effective cycles of work. Exception reporting and configurable notifications could help customers to make decision dynamically and on time.

While organizations have huge pressure on customer satisfaction and ensuring profitability, the need of the time is to time to ensure highest degree of plant efficiency

A mobile solution for technicians for capturing issues or managing the work, managing spare parts could help in increasing their wrench time by more than 100 percent. It can help them with history of equipment issues, location, spare parts required or even the right sequence of assignments. They can get their permit to work much easier and quicker so that there is no wastage of productive time. An update using a mobile device also ensures correctness and traceability of information captured.

SAP is the typical choice of manufacturing organizations be it process Industry or discrete industry. Generally, plants use spreadsheets or third party project management tools for planning and execution for both regular or shutdown maintenance. However, the complete cycle of maintenance activities can get significantly benefitted by a ERP intrinsic planning and execution tool and a complete digital transformation by adopting mobile applications and smart reporting for dynamic decisions. Tools like Massetic could benefit customers who use SAP in smoother planning and execution and ensure higher availability and up time of plants.

While organizations have huge pressure on customer satisfaction and ensuring profitability, the need of the time is to time to ensure highest degree of plant efficiency. A smart plant by adopting better maintenance strategy and tools will surely help the overall organization goal. The ever increasing role of technology is enabling businesses to execute plant maintenance initiatives in a much more effective and economic manner. This is ensuring that manufacturing plants minimize their service downtime and mobilize themselves with a constantly growing consumer demand while retaining maximum efficiency hence, serving as a robust foundation to launch them on a positive growth trajectory.