To survive and thrive in the current challenging climate, companies need a Continuous, Adaptive Strategy rather than a long-term plan or ‘snapshot strategy’. The problem is many manufacturers simply don’t have this kind of strategy in place, instead tending to work to three-to-five year plans that quickly go out of date.
We know Maintenance Managers have an awful lot on their plate, often working in a reactive, rather than a proactive way.
Working smarter doesn’t have to mean working harder. In fact, with asset Condition Management, you’ll continuously improve productivity, quality and efficiency. Here’s how.
What Is Condition Management?
AVEVA Condition Management has a Rule Management engine that uses logical equations of asset conditions to derive triggers, alerts, actions and provide prescriptive instructions. You can easily configure your own asset condition rules to be automatically monitored, helping you to understand what’s happening across the plant so you can respond as quickly as possible with the best corrective action.
There’s often a deeply entrenched view that comes from above that equipment should be ‘run to failure’. Equipment reliability is perhaps not viewed in the same importance as other KPIs within the manufacturing process.
But by implementing Condition Management and other predictive maintenance programs, organisations can maximise uptime and enjoy the obvious benefits that follow.
Condition Management enables Maintenance Managers to determine which of their assets are in good condition at any time and, more importantly, which of their assets need to be worked on sooner rather than later.
Equipment failures are detected earlier in the P-F (Potential to Functional Failure) curve - well before humans would typically discover there’s a problem. This reduces safety risks by preventing catastrophic failures and provides the facility with time to order spare parts and plan ahead to schedule the repair.
By detecting these earlier failures, plants can increase asset availability, reduce costs and avoid unnecessary downtime. It’s estimated that unplanned downtime represents an average of 10-15% in lost production. This is why so many manufacturers are moving away from existing strategies and switching to a proactive approach.
Artificial intelligence (AI) programs can help you to better understand the condition of an asset and therefore exactly what’s going on across the plant. This increases asset availability, reduces costs and avoids unnecessary maintenance downtime because you can make adjustments to lines and batches ahead of time.
AVEVA recognises this, and alongside Condition Management, AVEVA provides Automated Analytics using Non-Supervised AI for anomaly detection, Automated Analytics learns about the plant and provides “Newsfeeds” when a monitored parameter deviates from the norm to provide an early warning of a possible failure. Stakeholders can interact with the AI to help tune the automated earning.
Implementing Condition Management
Meeting ever-increasing production demands with existing equipment and facilities while also continuing to reduce costs is a key objective for all manufacturers. Whilst switching to this way of working requires buy-in from the top down and usually means a change in software, it may require only minor changes to equipment.
Organisations must find the optimum balance between asset availability and asset utilisation. Condition management software collects and analyses real-time diagnostics from all plant production assets to make better asset management decisions and optimise operations.
Condition management software ties vital information together with the required actions for critical plant systems. By integrating with the Control/PLC/SCADA and safety solutions, key information is provided through the operator console quickly and effectively.
Operator visualisation is seamless. Key information, such as asset performance trends, maintenance history and operational specifications are presented to the operator directly on their screen.
Condition Management alerts can be presented to stakeholders on mobile devices, shared as emails or passed to Enterprise systems.
All of this can speed up processes and make your life easier. Consider the automatic generation of work orders and the time saved as a result. Plus, with fewer errors and faster data, your team is empowered to make better, more informed, key decisions without delay.
The more information you have at your fingertips with fast access, the easier it is for you to respond to changing plant conditions. Condition Management can be part of wider transformations that improve efficiency and productivity through automation, AI and other digital strategies.
Down with Downtime!
For more information on Condition Management and the benefits of a proactive strategy within your plant, make sure to watch our latest webinar.
The webinar is packed with information on how AVEVA brings all your rich operational and asset data into one single platform, leading to better operational efficiency, asset reliability and productivity. 
Find the Right Software to Empower Your Team
You can find effective solutions to your daily challenges with the existing equipment you have, but you need support from cutting-edge technology.
Our approach is to understand where you want to go and then start with the low hanging fruit to prove ROI so we’ve introduced a low-cost trial approach. You don't have to spend lots of time and money to find out if it’s right for you.
Sign up for our 45-day free trial today, configure Condition Management on some of your assets and start to see immediate results.
