What do you do with your ‘necessary evils’ in the current market?

Written by: Stephen O’Brien and Jim Watt

The biggest 'necessary evil' of any manufacturing entity is maintenance. Whether it constitutes routine maintenance, breakdown maintenance or turnaround maintenance it is the 'necessary evil' that no one wants.

It consists of a budget which is often formed from historical misfortune with resources to match. The links between what maintenance we do, why we do it, and how we put a value on it are often disconnected, the rationale having been lost in the sands of time.

It is unwanted by operations because they either do not want to give over the equipment for maintenance, or they do not want to give up their time to prepare and isolate the equipment and then have those 'maintenance types' running around on their plant making a mess.

So as budgets are squeezed and plants still need to be maintained - to satisfy a plethora of reasons such as safety, legal requirements, efficiency and technical developments - what is the way forward?

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