Maintenance Skills and Metrics for a Better Return on Investment

A food processing company hired ARC to improve their Mean-Time-To-Repair (MTTR) which was too long and expensive.

Client Challenges

bottles-300px-cr.jpgA food processing company had introduced many advanced technologies over a period of several years in 15 plants. The networking topology was complex and included PLCs, Industrial Computers, HMI software packages, and Collaborative Production Management (CPM) systems. The maintenance infrastructure was organized for traditional crafts and lacked the ability to support these advanced systems. Mean-Time-To-Repair (MTTR) became too long and expensive

ARC Solution

Best Practices for maintenance of plant systems were investigated with an emphasis on support of complex systems and unscheduled downtime. ARC conducted many interviews with the leading manufacturing companies to benchmark management of their maintenance staff's training, retention, outsourcing, and measurements.

Equipment: Support Needed:
Devices and Sensors Craft electricians
PLC and DCS Electricians and technical
HMI and CPM Systems High tech and computing
Networks Software and systems

Results

The report and recommendations written by ARC were used to organize a new, multi-plant support structure for cost-effective delivery of the skills required. Collaboration among the operators and maintenance staff was established for improved problem identification. Specific technical skills where outsourced on a regional basis. Metrics were put in place along with audits of down time. The plants are now becoming effective users of their high technology investments.

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