Five things to do when no one can be in the plant
With many companies ordered to shut down and people ordered to stay in their homes to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, organizations and teams have had to adapt—and suddenly.
If your maintenance team cannot work in your plant, what should you do? How can you leverage this unplanned downtime?
We went to some Fluke Reliability subject matter experts to find out. Here are their top five suggestions:
- Knock out your maintenance backlog
As a maintenance backlog grows, it can lead to machine failure or regulatory compliance issues. If your plant is already experiencing downtime, it’s the perfect time to tackle your maintenance backlog. You can create and update work orders, order parts, and communicate with your team. - Establish or review your asset criticalities
If you have never performed an asset criticality assessment, now is the time. If you have already done one, revisit it and make any appropriate changes. Review every asset and component in your plant to determine which, if they run into problems, require immediate attention—and which do not.The most expensive and complex assets are not inherently the most critical. One inexpensive component breaking down can result in a production stoppage. A detailed criticality analysis shows you what most directly impacts your organization’s bottom line.
- Work on FMECA exercises and identify random/unknown failure modes
Failure mode, effects, and criticality analysis (FMECA) investigates the links between failures, their impacts, and what caused them. It goes beyond other failure review processes and brings to light the most probable and the most severe failures. A completed FMECA makes it possible to direct maintenance efforts most efficiently. - Tackle the tasks you’ve always said you’d do—if you only had more time
Everyone has a list of things they would get around to if only they had uninterrupted time. Now is your chance. Is there anything from your list you can do remotely? - Online training
Webinars and other online training are still available to you and your team. You can brush up on maintenance strategies, best practices, theories, applications, and more.View our upcoming and previously recorded Best Practice Webinars.
