By Steph Haan

“We have so many labour saving devices today that we get broke keeping them repaired. Everything is easier but requires greater maintenance” ~Lorne Sanny

Many companies consider plant maintenance as unrealistically high and would rather put it of as long as possible. Unfortunately, doing so results in excessive repair bills when the machine fails and needs to be shut down for repairs. It is a proven fact that companies that plan or predict maintenance activities have lower repairs costs in the long run.

Often manufacturing plants will only fix machine when it is absolutely necessary. Such “reactive maintenance” is extremely costly for the entire production line. These repairs do tend to sneak up on a plant and cause unexpected and unscheduled downtime which, in turn, cause lost productivity, a backup of inventory, delay in finished products, extra labour costs to fix the machine, operator labour costs while the machine is down, extra maintenance labour to perform reactive failure corrections, etc. Plants that utilize these reactive maintenance techniques can spend up to four times as much as they would if they simply do regular maintenance checkups.

 Attending companies were able to learn how to ensure that equipment is running to its prime, and in addition to that how any serious or costly failures that can affect the entire production line in the future is avoided. Keeping in mind that the upfront cost of effective training and equipment is significantly less than the unexpected cost of other maintenance methods.

The Total Plant Maitenance marcus evans conference, a two day conference that sought to analyze various maintenance strategies and pick the best maintenance programme suitable for the different company plants represented. Through gaining practical insight into increasing overall asset utilization through detailed asset ,management techniques that focus on improved ROI; fine tuning the plant maintenance strategies to consider action plans for critical and poorly performing assets; utilizing various condition monitoring tools and techniques throughout the plant within a daily maintenance framework; Constructing solid maintenance plans and schedules that eliminate backlog and sustain operational effectiveness; Considering all factors for partially and fully outsourcing the plant maintenance functions and knowing the risks that follow; Commanding Risk Based Inspection(RBI) application for critical areas within the plant and overall risk detection; detecting current and future failures and deriving corrective actions through Failure Modes Effects Analysis (FMEA) and complimenting the maintenance programme with effective Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) spares and materials management. Also focusing on using performance indicators to drive maintenance improvement, and review critical aspects of outsourcing total plant maintenance.

Presentations were made by 12 individuals with experience on plant maintenance techniques. These included:

Himanshu Dodhia, Formerly from the Kaizen Institute Africa
Joseph Nyamato, Factory Engineer Unilever Kenya
V.T. Moorthy, Director Ultra tech Cement, Aditya Birla Group, India
Dapo Oguntoyimbo, General Manager of HSSE Shell Oil Products Africa
S. Nadeem Ahmed, Sr. Power Plant Engineer, Six Sigma MMB, PIA Engineering and Maintenance
James Cowling Sales and Service Director, Martec South Africa (preferred partner)
Jan Myburg, Integrated Physical Asset Management Consulting , e-logics-South Africa (preferred partner)
Johan Alberts, Solutions Engineer, Pragma- South Africa
Collins Cherriyot, General Manager for Production and Operations, Ketepa
Benard MAingi, Head of Maintenance, New Kenya Co-Operative Creameries Ltd
Sudhir Aggarwal, Vice President, Reliance Gas Transportation Infrastructure Ltd, India
Samuel Muiri, Engineering Manager, Wrigley