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Tag: Maintenance Management

Get Going with FRACAS

Posted on by Matt Sickler

With the shortage of labor and supply chain disruptions, asset reliability needs to be a priority to sustain production levels, create quality products, and maintain productivity for your operations. Yet a survey of 80 large companies found that none were capturing the data required to evaluate and proactively address asset failures. NONE! These companies would be hard-pressed to implement a Failure Reporting Analysis and Corrective Action System (FRACAS).

If you are looking into a FRACAS or in the process of implementation, this article will highlight how to get started and set up your organization for success.

Continue reading “Get Going with FRACAS”

5 Ways to Get Started with Total Productive Maintenance

Posted on by Matt Sickler

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) was developed in Japan more than 50 years ago as a method of physical asset management focused on maintaining and improving equipment used in manufacturing processes to reduce operating costs. TPM was subsequently expanded to incorporate lean manufacturing techniques.

Today, more and more plants are turning to TPM to complement innovative maintenance technologies and provide a means of structuring and improving proactive maintenance strategies. In this article, we will consider some of the benefits of TPM and explore 5 ways that your plant can get started with Total Productive Maintenance.

Continue reading “5 Ways to Get Started with Total Productive Maintenance”

AI Applications for Condition-based Monitoring for EAM

Posted on by Matt Sickler

You may have heard about the automation capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) and about the considerable benefits of condition-based monitoring (CBM). Bringing these concepts together holds the promise of further automation in manufacturing and maintenance. Today, we’ll touch on the basics of CBM and AI then speak to the critical steps you can take to be ready for the future of enterprise asset management.

Condition-based Monitoring and AI Applications

Unpredictable equipment and asset failure make up 75% of the causation factors that lead to downtime and considerable financial losses. To mitigate the effects of equipment-related downtime, CBM frameworks – an Industry 4.0 business model – were developed. CBM frameworks involve the use of IIoT sensors, edge devices, and smart machines to monitor the real-time performance of production equipment to detect and automatically trigger an alert if a measure is out of normal range. Of course, the goal is to avert a breakdown event through a maintenance intervention.

AI applications such as machine learning (ML) bring greater efficiency to the analysis of the condition measurements in order to provide further advanced warning of an impending issue. Successful implementation of CBM strategies requires the deployment of both data collection and analytical tools to gain insight into equipment performance.

Types of Asset Condition Monitoring

Condition monitoring can be as simple as conducting inspection rounds to take and record measurement readings from pressure sensors, oil levels, temperature gauges, and more. CBM utilizes IIoT devices to take this a step further by replacing the human actions to inspect, capture and evaluate measures against pre-set parameters and trigger the alert. Here’s some common types and uses of asset condition monitoring:

Measurement Issues Detected Typical Assets
Vibration Detect mechanical faults such as imbalance, misalignment, looseness, and bearing failure Assets with rotating parts such as centrifugal pumps, motors, compressors
Temperature From simple temperature readings to infrared thermography to catch temperature irregularities which can be caused by a part misalignment or belt issue >Motors, bearings, gear boxes
Oil level & condition Testing lubricants & other fluids for level, chemical properties, contamination, viscosity, and foreign particles indicating degradation of the machine surface (ie. iron, silicon, aluminum silicate) Compressors, gear boxes, transportation vehicles
Sound Ultrasound testing for a change in the normal operating parameters as the source of the issue can vary widely. It could be anything from leaking gases, under/over lubrication, to improperly seated parts A wide range of equipment including equipment that has high-pressure fluids
Electrical Evaluating changes in the electrical parameters including induction, pulse and frequency response, capacitance and resistance. Motors & other electrical systems

Other asset condition monitoring techniques include electromagnetic, radiation, laser interferometry, motor circuit analysis and more. What’s key in asset condition monitoring is to be deliberate in your choice of assets, what is most important to measure, and how to measure for cost effective results.

Advantages of Condition Monitoring

CBM coordinates maintenance activities based on the asset condition as compared to regularly scheduled preventive maintenance tasks. It also reduces the potential of sudden breakdown. Both of these impacts result in greater efficiency and more cost-effective maintenance practices. In addition:

  • Improves asset reliability and availability for improved production efficiency
  • Increases asset performance and longevity
  • Reduces unplanned downtime

The degree of benefit is driven by the degree of planning, training, and use of technology to assist in the data collection and analysis.

AI in Condition-based Monitoring and Maintenance

Industry 4.0 and 5.0 technologies and data analysis capabilities make CBM truly predictive. That is, you can gain 60 or 90 days advanced warning of a condition changing and even identification of the underlying malfunction. This type of analysis requires a lot of data from a number of measurement systems to be fed to a central database where artificial intelligence is used to analyze the trends. The database structure in SAP S/4HANA has been specifically designed for this purpose.

“S/4HANA provides tools to help companies move from scheduled to predictive maintenance
for more efficient equipment uptime and lower service costs.”

Jim O’Donnell, TechTarget, SAP wants to own intelligent enterprise, but firms have options, >June, 2021

The application of ML brings another level of efficiency. Instead of determining and setting the parameters for each measurement manually, now the models can be generated automatically providing significant time savings for your engineers and technicians.

Additional impacts include:

“The incidence rate of both false alarms (false positives) and missing alarms (false negatives) have been found to be reduced by over 90%. This reduces human engineering efforts in diagnosing machine faults by over 60%, reduces maintenance budgets and improves machine availability by about 10%.”

Dr. Patrick Bangert, algorithmica technologies GmbH, Smart Condition Monitoring Using Machine Learning

Although there are great efficiency advantages of AI and ML for CBM, it can take time to collect the data needed for analysis. Get started with the right foundation.

Getting Started with Condition-based Monitoring Strategies

>1) Structure and Centralize Data Collection

AI, when used correctly to make good decisions quickly, requires that the data is available and accurate. If you have messy master data due to inefficient business processes, then you can’t utilize the data to drive process improvements.

Eliminating any paper based processes by deploying a modern software interface to SAP should be a first step. These systems can help streamline your core maintenance process steps and remove unnecessary work, like manually entering data into SAP, while structuring the data inputs into SAP. As we noted earlier, if you use or will be transitioning to SAP S4/HANA, it is specifically designed to deploy AI and ML for maintenance operations.

2) Capture Current Sensor Data

Your modern-day equipment likely includes a wide range of sensors that can be programmed to feed the central database. Even before you invest in additional IIoT devices, you can already be using the data available to analyze to set triggers for alerts or to determine where you need to invest in additional monitoring capability.

3) Determine Asset Criticality

Prioritize where to invest by reviewing your maintenance history to uncover:

  • Which critical assets are your “bad actors”? For high ROI, start with your biggest offenders.
  • Which assets have features that can be monitored? Not all failures are measurable.
  • Which assets will benefit most from condition-based monitoring techniques? The failure types have measurable degradation that can be recognized early enough to do something to avoid the complete failure event.

4) Practice Reliability Centered Maintenance

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) takes the approach of identifying the conditions that could potentially result in downtime and then prioritizing failure modalities from a maintenance cost standpoint. With this data, operations can decide what specific actions provide the best return on maintenance spend to prevent those failure modalities from manifesting themselves. As a result of RCM analysis, you will find that certain assets are critical for investment in measuring technologies and using AI, while others should be managed as “run-to-failure” due to the low cost to replace as compared to the cost of applying predictive measures.

5) End-to-end Digital Processes

Responding to CBM alerts requires real-time communication and coordination of the workforce. For maintenance operations, this means replacing paper work orders and notification processes with a mobile device with an interface to SAP. Initially condition monitoring activities will result in a little advanced notice of an impending issue. In these cases, real-time notification is critical to avoid the downtime event. Overtime, with AI and ML results, you can apply true predictive maintenance strategies and see greater forewarning of an issue starting to occur.

Let Us Help You Get Started

Here at Sigga, we have been helping asset-intensive industries with SAP Plant Maintenance drive digital transformation and mobile initiatives in industrial maintenance for 20 years. Our SAP Certified EAM software solutions can help you improve the capture, structure, and quality of the data needed to build condition-based monitoring strategies.

Our EAM Empower mobile EAM application digitizes the entire maintenance process connecting users across your business real-time. It helps your technicians accurately capture and structure the data you’ll need in SAP to determine asset criticality for condition-based monitoring investments.

Sigga Planning & Scheduling provides the management tools for the effective deployment of preventive and predictive maintenance strategies. Together these solutions form an effective foundation for real-time coordination of maintenance activities as a result of your condition-based monitoring investments.

Learn how you can take your preventive maintenance program to the next level!

CIO Priorities for Enterprise Asset Management in 2022

Posted on by Matt Sickler

These are unprecedented times with runaway inflation, supply chain issues, labor shortage, and continued impacts from the global pandemic. As a business leader, you need to accelerate the changes that are going to make your company more competitive and resilient in a world of constant change. You have been on the path to digitize your business as one clear strategy to help meet these needs. Yet progress has likely been slow-to-date – especially for internal teams like your maintenance operations. It’s time to take a new approach.

In today’s article, we are going to highlight how to drive the digital transformation in SAP-based operations to support a more lean and agile organization while minimizing the resource impact to your IT department. 

Digitization in Enterprise Asset Management

“The “new normal” is disruption. Organizations that lean into this reality and leverage their innovation capacity, technology and reach will not only survive, but grow as a result.”

Monika Sinha, VP Analyst, Gartner

In every facet of your business, you are having to constantly adjust to change driven by the pandemic, supply chain shortages, labor shortage and now unprecedented growing inflation. Technology is a key enabler of dealing with change, but with tight IT resources it is harder than ever to both accelerate and scale technology adoption across your business.

According to McKinsey in the report: Navigating inflation: A new playbook for CEOs, a key concern for CEO’s is “What is the fastest way to stabilize, and redesign stretched and, in some cases, broken supply chains? What capabilities will I need to increase my company’s resilience and control costs?… The good news is that digitalization will likely play an important role in answering these questions, and digital efforts often pay back their costs in 12 months.”

In other words, digital readiness is key for every facet of the organization including your operations teams.

The Imperatives for CIOs

Times are different, but the story is the same, digitization across your business will increase collaboration, efficiency, and capture the real-time data needed to increase resilience and control costs. According to Gartner’s CIO Agenda, The leadership, organizational, and technology priorities CIOs must address in 2022, “Use technology in ways that support key pieces of composable business. Composable Technologies are systems and data that integrate quickly and easily. Highly composable organizations recognize that iterative delivery processes, collaborative workstyles, and integrated systems drive better results.”

The CIO challenge is to put in place the technology infrastructure to enable this rapid composing of new products, new production methods, and new ways of collaboration to execute changes quickly and efficiently to stay competitive. This means that IT needs to accelerate digital initiatives, overcome historical roadblocks to progress, and do so with fewer IT resources.

How? Here’s a few strategies that are proving successful in today’s environment:

1) Democratize IT

The concept is simple, share the workload. How? Low-code and no-code tools are increasing efficiency for IT and the organization as a whole. Anyone in the business can collaborate with IT to digitize processes and collaborate to create better results.

“Who knew that one day, ordinary citizens, who lack deep knowledge of technology and programming, would be able to create really efficient solutions for their daily processes in an objective and clear way – and better: without relying on IT specialists? That’s what Low-Code provides: simplified access to technology.”

Mario Trentim, Low-Code Tools: Simplifying Technology as the Secret to Digital Transformation>, June 2022

These low-code and no-code tools are becoming increasingly available as standalone development platforms and as part of ready-made solutions. There’s many ways to start incorporating these tools sets into your development processes.

2) Start Small and Iterate

Tackle projects in an iterative approach. Agile software development methodologies have been around for a while. Now, with low-code and no-code platforms, this approach can overcome the roadblocks of past digital transformation initiatives.

“An agile transformation calls for small, specialized teams that rapidly develop experimental product iterations. Leaders establish a culture that trusts workers to experiment with creative solutions, giving them the freedom to “fail fast” and recalibrate by learning the lessons of these failures. …The value of this agile approach includes boosted workforce engagement, focused training and skill development, creative problem solving, and the ability to scale up quickly.”

McKinsey, Lighthouses reveal a playbook for responsible industry transformation>, March 2022

Besides enabling an iterative approach to each initiative, the agile approach set-ups the organization as a whole to be responsive to changes at any time.

3) Ensure Digital Readiness Across the Organization

Since digitization, collaboration, and real-time data are important for creating an organization that is adaptable and resilient to change, it is important that every group within your organization has at least achieved a baseline of replacing paper-based processes with a digital solution.

McKinsey found that the leading manufacturers were realizing significant value from Industry 4.0 technologies, but many were stuck in pilot purgatory. In their article, Capturing the True Value of Industry 4.0, April 2022, McKinsey identified several bundles of use cases that were key to success. Digital and mobile platforms for the front line workers was one bundle that was identified as a key enabler of the Industry 4.0 roadmap for business impact.

And as you know, digital transformation is more than deploying technologies, it is changing how people work, standardizing processes, and building employee skills and comfort with the use of technology. This is why digital readiness is key for every employee in the organization from the production manager to the maintenance technician.

4) Balance Investments Across Digital Initiatives

Investments in technology can get ahead of where your organization is ready to embrace. New Industry 4.0 and 5.0 technologies seem to come into play almost every week. To take advantage of this technology revolution, it is important to balance and pace the investments for better return on your investment. Many Industry 4.0 technologies hold the promise of incredible savings, but only if they can be utilized.

“Formalize the value at stake. In each assessed site, describe the actual value at stake by linking the most applicable Industry 4.0 solutions or use cases with current digital readiness, data availability, and IT/OT architecture.

McKinsey, Industry 4.0: Digital transformation in manufacturing, April 2022

If a pressure sensor indicates an impending issue, how long does it take your organization to recognize the issue, create a notification, approve, and turn it into a work order, and then dispatch it to a technician for repair? Hours? Days? Weeks? How many people had to be involved? What’s the value of Industry 4.0 technologies, like sensors with real-time information, if your processes are not digitized end-to-end to be able to act in real-time?

Industry 4.0 Opportunities with the Transition to SAP S/4HANA

With the move to SAP S/4HANA, many Industry 4.0 and 5.0 use cases will become enabled using the platform’s analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning capabilities, and databases.

“For productivity, S/4HANA includes robotic process automation tech so rote tasks can be automated, providing employees more time for higher value work for asset utilization, S/4HANA provides tools to help companies move from scheduled to predictive maintenance for more efficient equipment uptime and lower service costs for strategy, the modern ERP system includes real-time analytics features to enable data-driven decision-making.”

Jim O’Donnell, TechTarget, June, 2021

If your technicians are working with paper-based work orders which then require data entry of work status back into SAP, you won’t be able to take advantage of the power of the real-time information that SAP S/4HANA offers. This is just one of many examples for preparing maintenance operations for migrating SAP ECC to S/4HANA.

Digital Readiness for Maintenance Operations Made Easy

Here at Sigga, we have been helping asset-intensive industries mobilize maintenance operations for 20 years with a focus on SAP Enterprise Asset Management. Our software and mobile apps have been proven in use by over 70,000 technicians and are fully SAP-certified.

SAP Certified 4HANASAP_Silver_Partner_R-1

We understand what it takes to drive technology adoption in operations and preserve IT resources and budgets in the process. For example, our mobile EAM cloud SaaS solution comes on a no-code platform with no-code SAP integration. And, with our expertise in maintenance, we can actively drive a collaborative agile implementation and support adoption and scale across global sites.

Our Sigga EAM Empower mobile EAM application eliminates paper-based processes and digitizes the entire maintenance process connecting front-end technicians to SAP in real-time. As an outcome of implementation, the solution improves the capture, structure, and quality of your data as a baseline for taking advantage of many Industry 4.0 and SAP S4/HANA technologies.

Our integrated Planning & Scheduling desktop software provides an intuitive SAP UI5 Interface to SAP PM. This solution provides automation to drive annual budgeting, planning and regular scheduling of work orders. With the mass update feature, the solution improves data capture, structure, and data quality in SAP.

With our EAM products for SAP, your company can easily establish digital readiness within the maintenance organization. Let us help you make sure your data and processes are optimized so your maintenance operations are fully ready to take advantage of the speed, data analysis, and real-time information with current and future Industry 4.0 technologies.

Read More About Sigga and our EAM Solutions for Maintenance Operations

Cloud SaaS – The Agile Edge to SAP EAM

Posted on by Matt Sickler

The transition from SAP’s conventional ERP solution to S/4 HANA brings diverse positive changes to the table including improved performance, better security, and embraces third-party cloud-based SaaS applications. SAP fully recognizes the value of third-party solutions to deliver a superior user experience. When these solutions come on a cloud SaaS platform, the result is improved agility and tailored experiences replacing the customizations that in the past hampered the evolution of the SAP core.

This article will discuss these opportunities and more with utilizing cloud-based SaaS applications to simplify use and extend the capabilities of SAP EAM.

The New Relationship of SAP with Cloud SaaS Applications

 SAP S/4 HANA leverages SAP’s in-memory computing technology, SAP HANA, to empower organizations with more powerful tools to manage data and to drive data analytics. This focussed role for SAP S4/HANA can be traced to a few crucial causation factors – the widespread implementation of digital transformation initiatives, the move to industry 4.0, and the growing need to increase agility and adapt to rapidly changing conditions. And what roles do these factors play?

 Although 70% of enterprises may have adopted digitized data-capturing and aggregation processes such as an ERP like SAP, true digital transformation strategies are designed to achieve much more. The goal of the transformation process involves streamlining the ability to gain data-driven insights, automate repetitive tasks, enable front end-users with mobile devices, and to simplify decision-making. This leads to the next crucial factor in the equation.

 The fourth industrial revolution is expected to leverage data-driven analytics to automate front-end operational processes and facilitate the application of organizational strategies such as predictive maintenance. Although SAP simplifies the collection of data, prior to SAP S4/HANA the ERP did not provide a user-friendly interface nor seamless support for third-party applications.

Keeping data in silos defeats the analytics capabilities of an enterprise-wide information system. So, SAP’s strategy is to provide seamless support for cloud-based third-party applications allowing your organization to implement industry 4.0 business models and robust end-to-end digital transformation strategies supported by the power of the SAP backend.

 

Lastly, due to the growth in cloud SaaS applications, SAP saw the opportunity to solve issues they had with customizations. That is, they could push any customizations customers desired to the application layer of the technology stack freeing the core SAP system to operate faster, manage more data, and provide real-time, cross-business insights.

 

 

The Evolution of SAP and Third-Party solutions

SAP’s older ERPs such as ECC provided multiple challenging scenarios for organizations using these solutions to capture data and manage operational workflows. Conducting ECC version upgrades, software integrations, and customizing the ERP required extensive technical know-how. Every upgrade and customization project needed extensive recalibration to ensure legacy codes and existing functionalities functioned as expected within the system. Hence, customization projects required professionals with extensive expertise in the interdependencies within the ERP.

 As a result, utilizing third-party applications within traditional SAP ecosystems was a difficult proposition. The integration process required an extensive impact assessment before deploying. The assessment process generally involved evaluating the possibility of interface compatibility issues and data fidelity making the integration of third-party applications a complex, time-consuming, and expensive activity.

According to SAP, “SAP recognizes the need to complement its applications with best-in-class cloud SaaS solutions for the most critical lines of business”. Hence, with S/4 HANA, SAP provided opportunities for third-party cloud SaaS providers to develop intelligent and intuitive applications to deliver real-time connected end-user experiences including the use of mobile devices. As a consequence, SAP vastly improved the integration process.

With S/4 HANA, SAP turned their focus to their core business functions while embracing the agility Cloud SaaS solutions could provide. This arrangement ensures S/4 HANA continues to serve as a powerful in-memory computing resource for large data sets leaving Cloud SaaS applications to drive its front-end user experiences for the management of diverse workflows.

 

Agility Through Cloud SaaS Applications

 In addition to recognizing the value of enabling a wide network of cloud SaaS solutions for a breadth of user experiences, SAP is taking advantage of the agility of cloud SaaS solutions. That is, the ability for these solutions to handle the customizations that were once done in the past within the core ERP system itself.

 

“A modern approach to customization is one that offers a high degree of flexibility while maintaining the integrity of the core. Developing customizations on a development platform that is tightly linked to the core application capabilities yields the same benefits as customizations yet does not disturb the integrity of the core so necessary to ensure continuous innovations get delivered at the pace of business. All new modern SaaS based applications follow this approach. This extensions and platform-based approach to customization enables companies to provide an “agile edge” without disrupting the core. Companies can continue to add new capabilities that reflect their uniqueness in the marketplace without having to customize their core ERP code and lower ensuing risks and costs. A win-win in all regards!” SAP Blog

For companies who have migrated to SAP S/4HANA, you probably already have realized the limitations of the SAP system to encompass your customizations from the prior version. As such, you are likely dealing with the vanilla workflows. If you are in this situation, or migrating to SAP S4/Hana, it is important to consider third-party cloud SaaS applications now that can address your unique needs.

 

Leveraging Cloud SaaS Solutions to Optimize SAP EAM

Enterprises utilizing SAP S/4 HANA to optimize business processes and cross ERP data insights can take advantage of Cloud SaaS EAM solutions to collect the data to fuel the built-in intelligent technologies such as AI, machine learning, and advanced analytics.

Although SAP now offers an S/4 HANA Manufacturing suite, its solution focuses on capturing IoT data and facilitating collaboration leaving many opportunities for further digitization of workflows and providing better front end-user experiences within operations. For example, a Cloud SaaS application built for user experiences to conduct asset maintenance or developing optimized schedules can utilize and update the SAP core database while delivering superior end-user experiences with real-time access to the SAP data.

 

The real-time visibility Cloud SaaS solutions provide means workers are more efficient with their available work hours. Workers have crucial information at their fingertips and decision-makers can track operational KPIs in real-time. Other important benefits of utilizing third-party cloud SaaS applications include:

  • Leveraging the expertise of SaaS solution companies providing solutions for your functional area
  • Taking advantage of the specialization required for delivering intuitive mobile user experiences
  • Leveraging the fact that Cloud SaaS vendors handle security upgrades and continuous app improvements

Choosing a Cloud SaaS Application for EAM

 

Third-party solutions empower enterprises to take advantage of the opportunities SAP S/4 HANA brings to the table and this starts with choosing the right vendors. Here’s a few questions to ask when choosing a vendor:

  • Does the solutions provider have industry-specific expertise that relates to your use cases?
  • What is the vendor’s application track record within your industry?
  • Are the vendor’s solutions SAP-certified for SAP S/4HANA?
  • Are the mobile solutions intuitive native apps and provide full online and offline use?
  • How easy is it to customize the application to your work processes?

Sigga Cloud SaaS Solutions for SAP

 

At Sigga, we have been working with SAP for the last 20 years. We were one of the first SAP partners to have a product running on the Sybase Unwired Platform, the first partner to perform an SAP Customer Qualification Process, and we become a benchmark SAP ICC partner when it comes to integrating solutions to SAP.

 

Even today, we continue to be tuned on SAP’s strategies, products, and roadmap, which helps us to certify to each new platform, like SAP S4/HANA, and assist customers in taking advantage of the capabilities of each generation of SAP.

 

Our latest innovation for SAP is our Sigga EAM Empower mobile app, which is a cloud-based SaaS application. The solution comes on a no-code platform to simplify the process of modifying the app to your unique maintenance requirements without the need for customizations. No need for high-cost professional developers to create your workflows. In addition, we have a no-code SAP integration solution furthering the time and cost benefits. With the technical barriers resolved, you can quickly put our mobile solution in the hands of your technicians and see the power of real-time access and improved data quality in SAP. 

See the agility of a cloud SaaS mobile EAM!

 

New Tech Brings New Flexibility in Mobile Maintenance Apps

Posted on by Matt Sickler

Are you stuck in a queue with IT delaying the start of your digitization projects?

Do you ever wish you could tweak your apps yourself to fit your needs?

Do you want to avoid customization time and costs?

Are you afraid to commit to a software app that might be obsolete in three years?

If you said YES to any of these, continue reading to learn why technology advancements in software platforms should be part of your considerations when evaluating a mobile maintenance app for SAP PM. Continue reading “New Tech Brings New Flexibility in Mobile Maintenance Apps”

New Digitization Approaches for Strategic Maintenance Management

Posted on by Matt Sickler

The efficiency driven by end-to-end digital workflows is imperative for success in today’s tight labor market. The technology is mature and the methods to implement have evolved to overcome the historical challenges to embark on the change, such as

  • Limited budget and staffing – both in operations and IT
  • Poor quality master data
  • Disparate, critical, legacy systems (ie SAP EAM)
  • Employee resistance to change

The business opportunity is clearly significant, as McKinsey research found, “technology has helped some companies to boost maintenance-labor productivity by 15 to 30 percent.”

This article will discuss new process opportunities in software execution to digitize your paper-based workflows. It is easier today to overcome these implementation challenges, in order to improve productivity faster, reduce costs plus become “future-proof” with the flexibility to address future needs.

Continue reading “New Digitization Approaches for Strategic Maintenance Management”

Device Considerations for Mobile EAM with SAP PM

Posted on by Matt Sickler

Replacing your paper-based working processes and going fully digital with SAP PM requires consideration into the right software and mobile devices.First you need to identify the right mobile EAM app that will fully meet your needs. Your Second decision is to identify the mobile devices that will work for your various teams.As a leading supplier of mobile EAMapp for SAP, we have pulled together a list of mobile device features and options you may want to include in your research into mobile devices.

Feature Considerations When Selecting Mobile Devices

Rugged Mobile devices have become increasingly critical as technology, regulations,and working practicesevolve.In maintenance environments, conditions can be unpredictable, dangerous,or volatile. On top of this, there are usability, connectivity, liability, and employee safety considerations that all play a role in the types of mobile devices that are used on-site or in the field.Here’s some common features to consider:

Safety

Using electronic devices of any kind in hazardous maintenance environments creates a safety issue and violates codes and regulations, such as those set by OSHA.Hazardous areas include environments with combustible or ignitable substances, such as gasses or vapors. The hazardous designation is based on both the kind of hazard and the likelihood of the hazard being present.

Although according to Gayle Nicoll PhD, REP, ASP, CSP AECOM’s Americas Process Safety Lead, there’s been no incidents involving hazardous locations that have been directly attributed to PED(Personal Electronic Device)use”.So why the strict global regulations?Even A small risk is a risk and therefore understanding the regulations and implications for choice of mobile devices is critically important. In addition,employees must be aware, trained and adhere to the safety procedures for working in hazardous locations including use of electronic devices.

Look for devices specifically identified as“non-incendive”and are rated for the potential hazards in your work environments.Workers in the oil and gas industry, for example, are frequently exposed to risks that may include potential fires or explosions, and often complete their daily tasks in closely confined areas. Non-incendive devices are uniquely developed for these types of high risk environments to improve efficiency and safety.

 

Device Durability

Maintenance workers may be conducting inspections,taking measurements, servicing,or repairing equipment wherever the asset resides. This means that their devices could come into contact with liquids, grease, dust and debris, or extreme temperatures.

 

Often,smartphones and tablets must be durable for unusual circumstances, such as grease-coated fingers that may drop the device onto unforgiving surfaces.Devices Should be built to resist damage from drops of over a meter, submersion in water,operate within a range of temperatures,withstand vibrations and shocks,plus resistoil, dirt,or dust.Good news here is that the industry has set standards, tests, and rating scales for buyers to understand the degree of durability.For example, a smartphone rated at IP68 is “dust resistant” and can be “immersed in 1.5 meters of freshwater for up to 30 minutes.”

 

Battery Life

 A reliable, long-lasting battery is crucial to completing a job by the end of a regular workday or supporting employees through an extended workday. In circumstances where normal battery life still isn’t sufficient, then alternative solutions should be in place to support work continuity. For example, the battery life can be supplemented with external batteries,or hot-swappable batteries.You can also provide convenient charging stations in strategic locations.

For industries that may encounter emergency repair situations without power,further backup battery plans should be considered beyond the normal day-to-day requirements.

 

Touchscreen Sensitivity

A versatile display is an enormous asset in any maintenance environment, which is why screen technology should be a key factor. For example, being able to clearly read the screen in poor or very bright light, such as direct sunlight, is important for field work, as is being able to navigate the screen and scroll while wearing gloves or in wet, snowy,or humid conditions.Many of today’s rugged smartphone and tablet models include integrated Corning Gorilla Glass For added durability or special screen coatings that can help resist oil and fingerprints.

 

Touchscreen sensitivity should be designed to readily discern human touch,even if the screen is slick from humidity, coated in dust, or the user has gloves on. This ensures that weather conditions and personal protective equipment (PPE) aren’t deterrents to job performance and productivity.Screen resolution also factor to consider depending on the content being viewed as part of your team’s work.

 

Device Consolidation

Maintenance workers often use multiple devices on the job for equipment inspections and testing. Switching between numerous devices can be time-consuming and inefficient. For instance, a field worker in the energy and utilities industry may have to tradeoff between two or more tools to test gauges while in a high-risk setting.

Instead of lugging around a few different devices, workers can use a single smartphone or tablet that consolidates a number of “tools”to reduce the time typically devoted towards routine tasks.Consider a rugged mobile device with a radiofrequency identification (RFID) or a barcode scanner that can simplify routines and directly integrate data into a work management app to update work orders or warehouse records. One less devices can mean at least one less step in the process.

 

Camera

Smartphoneand tabletcameras have been continually improving through the years. Camera resolution may not be a critical consideration, but there are many other options to consider, including the ability to capture images in low-light situations or sense and capture infrared images.

 

Processor, Memory and Storage

Choosing the right CPU performance, memory, and storage options will be critical for staff productivity.Working memory (RAM) must accommodate the data managed in today’s applications plus the potential for machine learning, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and analytic capabilities of apps in the near future.Consider 4GB RAM memory as a minimum.

 

Storage memory is critical for worker productivity in locations without connectivity.Many mobile apps will store data on the mobile device to support continuous use of the app when the user is offline.Consider 128GB as the minimum storage memory.

 

Operating System

Your operating system choices are likely already established within your company policies and mobile device management security software. To decide on the right operating system for your industrial maintenance or warehouse operations, consider the availability of devices with the features you need.In addition, look at the operating systems supported by your choice of mobile EAMapplications.Generally, most device vendors and application providers support bothApple and Android operating systems.

 

Network Connectivity

 Maintenance technicians and workers need to have full access to the information and use of their mobile devices anywhere they work. Many locations, such as certain spaces within a warehouse or on an offshore oil rig, have spotty network connections or no signal at all. Workers need the capabilities to access and collect data in areas with poor or zero network connectivity regardless of the industrial environment.

Smartphones and tablets with a minimum of 4G LTE and WIFI 5GHz key for optimal connectivity. The mobile device should be equipped to support Bluetooth 5.0, which has a substantially longer range and at least twice the data transfer speeds for secure, short-distance connections.Most smartphones and tabletsinclude2.4GHz and 5GHzWiFiconnectivityto your router infrastructure. WiFi extenders can also be strategically located to support certain working environments.

 

Also, consider native mobile apps for free offline access.Natively designedmobileEAMappsprovide the data that workers need in areas without connectivity so they can continuously collect information, review work orders,reference equipment manuals, or verify task completion.

 

Understanding Feature Options

There are many options in each of the features we have outlined above.The Mobile Device manufacturers help by grouping commonly requested features into a single rugged smartphone or tablet for typical industrial use cases. Identify your critical and nice-to-have features to make the right feature/price/model decisions to support each of your different work teams.

 

Download our feature guide to industrial mobile device features to specify your particular requirements.

  

How Sigga Can Help

 Sigga has 20 years of experience in digitally transforming workflows across a range of asset-intensive industries who use SAP.We offer native mobile apps for maintenance and warehouse operations that deliver the full range of benefits enabled by a native mobile app, including faster performance, better security, and more streamlined use of features of the phone, such as the camera and GPS, from within the app.Or Apps Are designed specifically for full offline access to app features and data resources to support teams in any situation with a reliable user experience.

  • Sigga’s Mobile EAM app keeps technicians in the field or plant with immediate access to information which results in greater productivity, real-time data visibility, and reduces maintenance costs.
  • Sigga’s Warehouse and Inventory app improves efficiency of warehouse resources, increases data accuracy, and reduces inventory carrying costs.
  • Sigga’s Planning and Scheduling solution improves maintenance effectiveness by automating many maintenance management activities from planning annual maintenance budgets to creating schedules that result in improved technician routing and increased asset uptime. 

Effective Maintenance Management Strategies for 2022

Posted on by Matt Sickler

As 2021 draws to a close, we look back to the trends that have had a significant impact on maintenance operations. From the worsening labor shortage to lingering supply chain issues, we can see that many of the challenges from 2022 will continue to be a force to contend with in 2022.In this article, we’ll explore the trends and related resolutions to consider in maintenance operations planning and investments for the coming year.

EAM Challenges and Forecast for 2022

What trends and challenges do we expect to be a force in 2022?McKinsey asked majorJournalists, media executives, columnists, commentators, and media critics — from the US and around the world: What major themes will we see in global media in 2022? What should we see more of?

“The high interest we see now in global supply-chain stories will continue to grow.
 This includes big-picture stories about systems under duress and global worker shortages.

– Meredith Artley, Editor in Chief and SVP, CNN Digital Worldwide

  

“It’s about labor. COVID-19 has exposed the long-standing divide between labor and corporations in terms of wages and working conditions… and it’s going to become more intense come 2022. 

– Marsha Cooke, SVP global news and special projects, VICE MEDIA LLC

 

“Battles over climate change policy and implementation of agreements will dominate national and international news agendas in 2022. This, of course, encompasses so much. After so many years of discussion, we may see a revolutionary breakthrough in corporate social responsibility and the consideration of environmental, social, and governance criteria to rate companies’ performance, conduct, and future strategy.”

– Valérie Arnould, Deputy Director, digital revenue network, World Association of News Publishers

 

 “The rolling changes to our world brought about by exponential technology developments and the disconnect with slower, linear approaches of our government and institutions will surely remain a dominant story in 2022. There are deep ramifications for these technology developments, including the continued impact of crypto on finance, the tech platforms on information and democracy,AI and automation technologies on jobs, renewable energy sources and better batteries on the environment, and synthetic biology on our health and medicine. But the flashpoints will only get messier and have greater business and financial implications.”

– Kevin Delaney, Co-founder and Editor in Chief, Charter

 

Certainly, these challenges are not new topics, but as the journalists noted, they are becoming more urgent or lingering requirements for 2022 planning.Is it time to revisit your current path and consider prioritizing actions to better manage and improve maintenance operations? Take a look at our articles this year that pull together proven strategies and tactics to address these challenges and more as you plan for 2022.

 

2022 Resolutions

1) Better Planning to Manage Through Continued Supply Chain Issues

Maintenance teams need to improve their ability to manage the inventory of parts and materials to maximize production uptime. It is challenging enough for production teams to deal with the supply chain issues for raw materials. Add the uncertainty of obtaining spare parts to quickly repair downed equipment, the situation becomes unacceptable.

Maintenance operations need to do their part to reduce unexpected downtime and preventive maintenance is the tried and true path to mitigating downtime. But committing to the execution of planned maintenance tasks can be especially challenging when corrective and emergency repairs take precedence. Given the shortage of skilled labor, the situation is only getting worse.

There are proven maintenance strategies, like reliability-centered maintenance, that can help you plan your maintenance approach to minimize expenses and optimize the use of your limited workforce. 

If you don’t already utilize sensors to facilitate inspection rounds and reduce preventive maintenance frequency, consider getting started on the path towards predictive maintenance.If you are already on this path, consider the steps to further your progress to take full advantage of these technologies for predictive maintenance.Sensor technology can give you the advanced warning of a failure to enable the time needed to procure parts and materials.

Minimizing surprises and turning around a reactive maintenance department, will not only reduce downtime, but it will also improve the advanced planning of replacement parts and materials due to the visibility of requirements from creating the PM plans.

 

2) Improve Job Attractiveness, Hiring, and Retention of your Skilled Maintenance Workforce

Besides deploying technologies to drive efficiencies, technology can help you improve job quality to attract and retain industrial maintenance talent.In fact, modern day technologies to support work tasks such as mobile devices and equipment sensors are fully expected by the younger generations in maintenance jobs.

With what they are called the “great resignation”(employees just leaving their jobs over the latter half of2021),it is critical to deploy strategies NOW to overcome the shortage of skilled maintenance labor. Successful organizations will focus on how to “do more with less” as opposed to hoping that the situation will quickly turnaround.

 

And, as you look at your plans for 2022, consider how to make your maintenance department organization structure more effective in order to work with the staff you have or worse yet, with fewer skilled technicians.

3) Increase EAM Planning in Support of Environmental, Social, and Governance Evaluations

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) is gaining greater interest with investors who are evaluating how companies mitigate these risks to ensure their long-term sustainability as a business.Maintenance operations teams are no stranger to developing risk mitigation plans. ESG forces the effort beyond the usual EAM plans. If you aren’t looking at your plans with an eye towards ESG, now is a good time to start. 

Part of ESG planning is the evaluation of how companies can adapt and be agile in the face of volatility, uncertainty, change and ambiguity (VUCA) in today’s business environment.To address these challenges, the International Standards Organization (ISO) developed theISO 55000 series (55000, 55001, and 55002) of international standards covering the management of assets of any kind. The ISO 55000 series describes what a company should do to maximize the value of its assets on a sustainable basis.

Social strategies to protect the workforce is an on-going and expanding consideration for advancing maintenance operations management.It is also a driver of growing compliance regulations especially for food-quality plant maintenance for food & beverage manufacturers.

 

4) Invest in AI and Automation Technologies to Optimize EAM

Analysts have been consistent in promoting the acceleration of adoption of digital technologies is necessary in today’s environment. Not only to manage the challenges of managing people through a pandemic, but also to provide the agility to respond to sudden changes in their operations. The side benefit is greater productivity to deal with the labor shortage situation.

As McKinsey& Co. found in their research, “When companies get all of the requirements right, the results can be impressive. Leading players in a variety of heavy industries have used digital tools in dramatically reducing unplanned outages while boosting maintenance-labor productivity. Higher availability and a more-efficient workforce have increased profitability by 4 to 10 percent in some organizations.”

Getting the “requirements right”, requires effective change management for industrial maintenance teams. 

Industry 4.0 technologies are key to growing cost-effective predictive maintenance strategies.Advancing your use of these smart planet technologies will be important in 2022, as the Fifth Industrial Revolution (Industry 5.0) will take these capabilities a step further by improving the collaboration between humans and machines, allowing humans to work even more smarter and more efficiently.

 

Planning for a Successful 2022 

Annual Maintenance Planning 

As you finalize your annual maintenance plans for 2022, consider the investments in processes to improve your planning and budgeting process. Creating a bottom-up, data-driven, maintenance budget with SAP can be challenging. And if you did this recently, consider what it’s going to take to keep track of your actual spend to budget in 2022. There is a better way, with an automation solution to support the process of maintenance planning and budget management. The solution can maintain views of the department budget and spending by financial cost categories as well as by maintenance operational views.

Planning and scheduling automation tools canals help you reduce budgets with more effective maintenance planning– including annual planning, down to the monthly/weekly and daily planning and scheduling of maintenance tasks.These tools are key to turning around a reactive maintenance operation and gaining control of limited resources.

Measuring Results 

Now is a good time to establish baseline measures to track the effectiveness of your maintenance operations in 2022. Here’s some common measures to consider tracking for next year:

  • Wrench time – when was the last time you conducted a wrench time study? Do you know what are the common time wastes for your valuable, limited technician staff? A wrench time study is a great way to uncover the low-hanging fruit of time wastes nonetheless benchmark your operations with other similar organizations.
  • Maintenance effectiveness – Look at your 2021 results to evaluate your percentage of planned, corrective and breakdown maintenance work. Again, compare to benchmarks and set goals for 2022 to shift towards more planned maintenance for lowering your costs and optimizing your use of resources in the long run.
  • Schedule compliance – and similar planning measures help you identify the root causes of low compliance issues to improve planning accuracy and staff efficiency
  • Downtime – MTTR, MTBF, OEE are all measures that can help drive collaborative conversations with production to optimize operations overall.

Justifying the investment in automation and mobile solutions 

Building the business case to invest in solutions for the maintenance department doesn’t have to be difficult. Often a quick, back-of-the-envelope calculation can demonstrate the potential for real cost savings and productivity improvements. You can add more rigor with these cost savings analysis tools:

  • Mobile EAM Savings. Justify the investment in replacing paper with mobile devices for technicians to work directly with SAP PM, the most obvious impact is reducing resources due to the wrench time improvements. And if you need to justify a maintenance solution investment without cutting headcount, consider making the case from the hidden cost savings.
  • Planning and Scheduling Savings. Justify the investment in adding automation to the process of maintenance planning and scheduling from SAP PM data. In this whitepaper, Unleash the Power of SAP and Save, we outline the savings in terms of improving wrench time, operational effectiveness and time savings for the planners and schedulers.

20-Years of EAM Innovations 

For two decades, we’ve been staying on top of the evolution of challenges for maintenance operations in asset-intensive industries.In 2021, we celebrated several milestones in our evolution as a company:

  • Gemspring Capital partnership –at the beginning of the year, we went into partnership with Gemspring to support our rapid global expansion to serve and expand our enterprise clients with operations around the world.
  • SAP Silver Partner – for over 15-years, we’ve been focusing on innovations in EAM for SAP including developing our own proprietary SAP integration technology and sustaining SAP certifications for our EAM software and mobile solutions. Few, if any companies, can say they have been focused on SAP EAM and mobility for more than a decade.
  • Successful Customers – we are proud of the results our customers have achieved and continue to experience as we evolve our partnerships to achieve new levels of productivity. Our current global enterprise customers are also key to our innovation roadmap, including our latest launch:
  • Budget Management automation – we recently launched a new innovation to further improve how companies utilize SAP PM for annual budgeting and budget tracking. This solution is another example of augmenting and optimizing SAP with today’s automation technologies.
  • Sigga 20-year Anniversary – Our long history of dedication to SAP and EAM is your guarantee of results.

As 2021 draws to a close, here at Sigga, we look forward to partnering with our enterprise customers to overcome current and future challenges in EAM.Our talented team are tirelessly working on new innovations to help companies get more done with fewer people, optimize maintenance metrics, and provide the agility needed to succeed in 2022 and into the future. 

Choose an experienced partner to simplify your SAP EAM workflows.

Learn more about Sigga.

 

Advancing Failure Analysis for SAP Plant Maintenance

Posted on by Matt Sickler

SAP Plant Maintenance(PM) plans are key to reducing and minimizing the impact of unplanned events on safety, the environment, and business profitability. But creating and staying committed to the execution of PM plans is often a challenge with limited resources and data quality issues.

In this article, we will discuss how organizations can improve data collection and analysis to make informed decisions and improve preventive maintenance plans.

 

Making a Commitment to Increase Preventive Maintenance

When Equipment is not working properly,it is not producing capacity. A lack of production translates to lost revenue. Worse still, complete failure can result in significant costs to repair or replace equipment,idle production staff,and even loss of raw materials such as spoilage in food & beverage manufacturing. Preventive Maintenance goes a long way towards maximizing productivity and avoiding costly unplanned downtime.

 

Many organizations do not effectively deploy proactive maintenance strategies such as preventive, predictive,and reliability-centered maintenance. As the Marshall Institute notes, there is a heavy tendency to use the approach of “run to failure” rather than practicing preventative maintenance. And even in maintenance departments that indicate that they are committed to preventive maintenance,many do not practice it fully or effectively.

 

One of the reasons that these initiatives often fail is that the preventive maintenance (PM) plans are not based on the right data. Maintenance planners rely on a broad range of data sources when putting together PMtasks. For example, equipment manufacturers’ manuals, work order history,and advice from reliability experts. Since many maintenance organizations continue to rely on paper-based processes and manually input data into SAP,PM tasks are often based on incomplete and inaccurate data. Thus,data integrity plays a crucial role in creating and implementingPM plans.

 

Data Integrity in SAP Plant Maintenance

Maintenance leaders are often surprised to learn that even though they have powerful system to manage maintenance data in SAP PM, they may not be getting the most out of it. Such was the case in a South African-based petrochemical plant. Management began to notice that PM jobs and repairs were not being completed on their first attempt. This contributed to an increase in the work backlog, rising costs, and inefficient use of maintenance technician’s time.

As management delved further into the issue, they identified something that was both troubling and astonishing.Since Work order results were manually entered into SAP, the details on what happened and the cause of the failures were based on hand written notes. In SAP PM, these are open text fields to capture the data.As they looked into the data, they found over 300 different reason code for failure that pointed to one issue: the parts were not available to complete the work order the first time.

The open-ended responses created a database that could not be easily analyzed by stakeholders to look at failures,root causes,nor trends. A lack of standard data entry fields negatively impacted the data integrity. And poor data integrity leads to incomplete and/or ineffective maintenance planning.

 

Developing an Effective SAP Preventive Maintenance Plan

 Failure analysis is a crucial component of a proactive maintenance culture. It involves collecting and analyzing failure data to identify the root cause of a breakdown. Failure analysis typically conducted after a failure has already occurred.Reliability engineer and maintenance managers can use what they learn to improve the planning of PM tasks as well as modify machine design or how equipment is used.

But failure analysis is only useful in the maintenance planning process if stakeholders have access to complete and accurate data. This means streamlining and standardizing the collection of maintenance data within SAPPM through the use of automation technologies. For example, through the use of mobile EAM solution technicians can identify the reasons for failure using drop-down menus of predefined reason codes. This information is automatically synced with SAP to give maintenance planners the reliable and complete data they need tocreatePM plans.

While the process of improving SAP PM plan may seem overwhelming, you can get started by following the steps outlined here:

 

  1. Audit Data Resource

 The first step is to compile your data resources to ensure that you will have the data that you need to engage in meaningful analysis.Then determine which assets you want to include in your preventive maintenance plans. For organizations that do not have established preventive maintenance processes, you may only want to start with a handful of your most important assets and scale up from there.

 Relevant data resources will include things like manufacturer repair manuals,pastwork orders, and failure reports.If your maintenance department relies on paper-based work order management and SAP PM,this will be a time-consuming task until you better structure the data inputs into the system.Focus on pulling together the data from past work orders for each assetto determine:

  • What failed
  • When it failed
  • Why it failed
  • What Type of repair was done
  • Did it fail again
  1. Conduct RCA and/or FMEA

Effective Maintenance planning encompasses two perspectives: what did happen and what could happen. RootCauseAnalysis (RCA), also called failure analysis, looks back at what has already happened. When you experience a corrective or breakdown event, an RCA involves looking at why the problem occurred and working your way down until you identify the underlying causes. For each cause, you can identify a solution. These solutionscanbecometasks in your PMplan.

 

Unlike RCA,Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA)seeks to identify what could happen by identifying potential failure modes (FM).There are several types of FMEA analysis: Design, Process and Functional. We are going to focus onFunctional examples.The process starts with a bottoms-up approach. Each component of an asset is examined to identify all potentialFMsthat can happen and what would be the consequences of each failure. Since technicians are the most familiar with assets, they are typically the best resource for identifying these details.

 

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis – Pump System Example

Equipment function Functional failure Component Potential failure modes Potential effects of failure Potential causes of failure Current controls Frequency Of controls
Provide process flow Loss of process flow Motor Seized bearings Total loss of capacity Lack of lubrication Lube motor bearings 6M
Provide process flow Degraded process flow Impeller Reduced discharge pressure Partial loss of capacity Normal wear Overhaul pump 2Y

Making FMEA the heart of an equipment maintenance plan

 

  1. Prioritizing Risks

Using this information, maintenance department scan then set criteria for evaluating the level of risk of each identified failure and assignita Risk Priority Number (RPN). The RPN is a metric that used to prioritize maintenance tasks based the likelihood of an occurrence,ability to detect the problem, and the severity of the impact.For example– rating the severity(SEV)of the failure:

 

Rating Effect Severity of the effect
10 Hazardous without warning Very high severity, potential effects safe system operation without warning
9 Hazardous with warning Very high severity, potential FM effects safe system operation with warning
8 Very high System inoperable with destructive failure without compromising safety
7 High System inoperable with equipment damage
6 Moderate System inoperable with minor damage
5 Low System inoperable without damage
4 Very low System operable with significant degradation of performance
3 Minor System operable with some degradation of performance
2 Very minor System operable with minimal interference
1 None No effect

Source: Failure Mode and Effects Analysis Under Uncertainty: A Literature Review and Tutorial

 

Follow the same approach to identify a scale for likelihood to occur(OCC) and likelihood of detection (DET) and multiply the three risk factors to determine a RPN number.Then, working with the engineers and technicians identify recommended actions, frequency required, and forecast the end result using the sameRPN scale.

 

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis – Pump System ExampleContinued

Risk assessment (as is) Recommended improvements/actions Recommended improvement process frequency Responsibility/ date Risk assessment (to be)
SEV OCC DET RPN       SEV OCC DET RPN
6 5 3 90 Include on vibration and IR route 3M PdMTech/ 1Q22 6 3 2 36
4 6 5 120 Monitor flow and discharge pressure 1W Operation/ 1W22 4 6 3 72

Making FMEA the heart of an equipment maintenance plan

 

This type of analysis can start at a high-level,looking at the major components of a critical asset, then overtime go deeper into sub-components and materials.

 

The result allows maintenance engineers and managers to prioritize PM tasks and make informed decisions to improve the organization’s commitment to executingPM plans.Redo The analysis annually to evaluate the impact and further refine your plans for further optimization of your resources.

 

In Conclusion

Preventive Maintenance help organizations avoid unplanned downtime and improve resource allocation.While many organizations indicate that they are committed to preventive maintenance plans, initiatives are often hampered by the lack of quality data and the ability to analyze it.

 

Start with structuring the capture of data for analysis and then you can look at industry-proven methods like RCA and/or FMEA to prioritize and focus yourPM plans.Understanding the RPNpriorityof a planned task improves the organization’s commitment to see that it is performed on time. Plus,based on data, you can optimize the frequency of a task– possibly reducing the number of PMs required per year,more efficiently utilize your resources, and increase your schedule compliance.

 

By making the commitment to better capture and structure data,analyze failures,and build better SAP Plant Maintenance plans, you can achieve long-term results with higher asset OEE and minimize the impact of unplanned events on safety, the environment,and business profitability.

 

How Sigga Can Help

 Sigga is a certified SAP partner with over two decades of experience providing industry-leading industrial maintenance solutions. Our mobile EAMsolution streamlines the collection of data. Work orders are dispatched to technicians on their mobile devices. Technicians automatically capture and structure the data needed for analysis through their day-to-day use of the app to complete their work orders.Data is automatically synced with SAP Plant Maintenance. This solution solves data gaps and helps enable maintenance teams to be able to create, implement, and monitor preventive maintenance plans.

 

In addition, our planning and scheduling solution automates routines to improve the deployment of preventive maintenance programs with full visibility to the prioritization of tasks.With these two solutions, our clients have seen productivity results from 15% to over 50%.

 

Sigga Solutions

Read more about Sigga Solutions and how we can help you improve your preventive maintenance program.