Asset management and maintenance: choosing the right partner for the job

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June 2024 Industrial Wireless

By Nnadozie Ogbuehi, field services director at Schneider Electric.

In a research paper published by Taylor and Francis Online with the title ‘An approach to improve asset maintenance and management priorities using machine learning techniques’, asset maintenance and management activities are described as typical services provided by a physical asset maintenance firm.

The statement underscores the importance of partnering with the right service provider to manage and maintain assets. According to the paper, “Numerous services are available today to develop an optimised asset management solution to enhance asset operations, by improving the system availability, decreasing downtime, and operation and maintenance cost. A combination of these services would result in an optimised asset management solution that would satisfy the needs and challenges of the asset operators to improve the asset system availability and reduce the downtime of the assets, while following a systematic planning of operation and maintenance activities.”

It is therefore important that organisations choose the right partner for the job. Your asset maintenance partner should be reputable and knowledgeable, and should understand your environment and the equipment that runs it.

Investing in an asset management partner, backed by a robust maintenance programme, must form part of business operations and resultant OPEX expenditure. Not only do these programmes run systems efficiently and maximise equipment expectancy, but they also play a fundamental role in mitigating downtime and system failure.

What should you look for?

The saying “It’s a simple task to make things complex, but a complex task to make things simple” couldn’t be more apt when choosing an asset maintenance partner. In a nutshell, these are five attributes an organisation should look for when choosing a partner:

1. Expertise of the maintenance personnel.

2. Quality assurance.

3. Onsite response time.

4. Remote monitoring capability.

5. Comprehensive onsite inspection.

Human error can often lead to operations issues, which is why it is so important to ensure that service personnel are experts. Your asset maintenance partner should feature a pool of system specialists who receive ongoing training, which includes safety protocols, and they should be certified by regulatory bodies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

The service and maintenance team must have access to the necessary vendor tools and software that allow for system diagnostics and newest field service bulletins, created by the system vendors, that alert them to trending issues.

In addition, access to international support that features technical experts from various regions and also to global case studies will provide valuable insight into the particular challenges organisations might face.

Remote monitoring and onsite inspection

Both remote monitoring and onsite inspection play an all-important role in preventive maintenance. Remote connectivity allows for quicker diagnosis of problems, which can then be addressed without having to send a technician to visit the site.

However, onsite visits are extremely important and can provide the following benefits:

• A visual inspection will in a non-invasive way identify potential problems like dust or debris on a condenser, dirty condenser coils, bloated or leaky batteries, etc.

• An environmental inspection will allow the specialist to assess how a system can be impacted by humidity, air, and water quality. These can all have a direct impact on the function and life of the system.

Lastly, technologies such as data analytics and AI now play a vital role in asset maintenance and repair. The more connected and smarter services become, the more your service provider will become an invaluable and trusted advisor.

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Industrial Wireless

Asset management and maintenance: choosing the right partner for the job

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