Critical equipment refers to the equipment that could affect the quality levels, impair an operations unit’s ability to attain certain objectives, or violate its environmental standards.
A criticality rating is used to determine how often certain equipment should be maintained while also providing a schedule guide of which work orders can be rescheduled and the ones that require immediate attention.
Rating the criticality of your equipment is a great way to establish a strong maintenance plan. When you rate your equipment and set guidance rules for them, it helps direct your engineering and maintenance efforts to the critical equipment. It’s important to note that critical ratings of equipment are assigned as per their vulnerability versus the consequence of failure. In general, critical equipment should be taken very seriously as they determine the continuity of a plant’s operations.
For this reason, you should always favor your critical equipment and treat them differently from the rest. The following are some of the actionable tips on how to deal with your critical equipment;
Contents
1. Maintenance scheduling
When it comes to your critical equipment, maintenance scheduling is very important. It regulates what maintenance actions should be taken, by whom, and when. Maintenance scheduling involves creating a calendar about all the in-progress and incoming maintenance work.
The equipment with high criticality should always take precedence over all the other equipment when it comes to maintenance; those that directly impact the production of the plant. This ensures that the plant keeps operating efficiently and any failure of the critical equipment is avoided.
Regular maintenance for the critical equipment guarantees continuity of the plant activities, and it also extends the life of the equipment. This ensures that the operating unit does not end up losing money and delaying production due to the abrupt failure of the critical equipment. For example, at WinnellieValves.com you will get training to ensure that the critical equipment at your operational unit is being operated, maintained, and specified correctly. This helps technicians to understand the limits of the critical equipment and work within them.
2. Asset replacement
The more critical equipment is, the more funding it should get for the sake of replacement or new parts. In all operational units, it’s important for the critical equipment to always work as new.
For example, suppose a certain part of critical equipment is worn out or isn’t functioning as it should. In that case, the operation unit should prioritize getting new parts for it or replacing them altogether.
This should happen before any other equipment in the plant can be considered. An operational unit should always set aside the bigger share of its budget to cover critical equipment repair and replacement costs above all other activities. When replacing the critical equipment, always compare all the equipment on the list to settle on the one with the longest manufacturer lifespan. Although this might not be a solid reference point for replacement, it’s still a great measure of durability among most industrial equipment.
You should also vet the manufacturer of the replacement before making the purchase. Look deep into the company’s reputation because that is the only way you can tell if they manufacture high-quality products or not.
3. Life-cycle costing
This involves tracking the cost of owning certain equipment. By doing this, you’re able to identify the true cost of maintaining certain equipment throughout its lifetime.
With life-cycle costing, an operational unit will be able to identify the equipment that ranks lower in the list and prioritize the critical equipment with the highest life-cycle costing.
The equipment with the highest life-cycle costing should always be given priority since losing it is much more costly to the operational plant.
When the plant computes the life-costing of all the equipment, it will make repairs and schedule maintenance on the critical equipment with the best economic life.
4. Failure analysis
For any given operational plant, it’s important to analyze the probability of failure of different equipment. This entails how equipment is likely to fail in the future and what can be done about it. Most of the failure analysis techniques used in different operational plants are very expensive and time-consuming. This makes it economical for the operational plants only to prioritize failure analysis of the critical equipment. When the common causes of its failure are established, the plant will then spend on preventive measures. This ensures that the chances of the critical equipment failing are minimal to keep the plant fully functional.
Not all the equipment that an operational plant uses are critical to its operations and production. In that case, with the above tips, operational plants can focus on the equipment that matters to keep production in progress.
