Uptime Magazine - October/November 2008 - (Page 23)

in a variety of industries, including aerospace, defense, packaging, refining, transportation, as well as within a number of the world’s largest mining companies. As previously stated, maintenance practices and procedures in some industries can directly and dramatically impact the health and safety of those industries’ workers. This is especially true in the mining industry. So it makes sense that both maintenance and executive management in mining would want to ensure that maintenance technicians are spending the bulk of their time focusing on their primary job - maintaining equipment and facilities - rather than spending excess time and energy navigating from screen to screen in an EAM system to enter important data and access key information. Nor would they want maintenance technicians spending excess hours or even days in training sessions learning how to use and update these complex EAM and ERP systems, that’s time away from their primary function. As one executive put it to me, we want our “maintenance people turning wrenches”. In other words, he was voicing his desire for his company’s technicians to be able to devote their time to primary maintenance tasks, not to manipulating the EAM system. He’s looking for a simpler solution to a not-so-simple EAM system. Fortunately for that executive, the DTS eMESA solution can provide an easier way. To illustrate, much of the remainder of this article will focus on how one company, Vale Inco, has implemented the eMESA solution to ease that data entry, update, and retrieval process. tenance processes across divisions. Then in 2006, Vale Inco saw a demonstration of the eMESA solution at a conference. In eMESA the company saw a possible solution to several emerging requirements. Among them: • The company wanted to standardize the maintenance processes the workers were following in different divisions and at different facilities. • It wanted to implement common drop down menus, screens, and tables across plants to enable that standardization. • The company wanted a system that would drive everyone to use the system the same way, so standardization could be enforced. • Yet at the same time, the company wanted a system that could be easily customized, so different processes and different workflows could be prescribed when and where needed, allowing differences across divisions and facilities as appropriate. • For example, it wanted certain fields or screens to be visible at one division when needed, but never visible at other divisions, because the information to be gathered in those fields or on that screen would not be relevant in other divisions. • It wanted to reduce the amount of time needed to train the technicians on how to use the system. • And last, but not least, it wanted to slash the amount of time maintenance workers spend on the system creating work orders and updating work order related information. Vale Inco: A Vision for Progress Based in Toronto, Canada, Vale Inco is a leading producer of nickel, copper, cobalt and precious metals. Vale Inco is a wholly owned subsidiary of Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, the world’s second-largest mining company by market capitalization. Vale Inco had been using a leading ERP/EAM solution, which has numerous implementations in the mining industry, for more than ten years. While the fundamental capabilities of the EAM solution the company was using satisfied its basic needs for many years, Vale Inco was facing an emerging challenge in that each division of the company had its own implementation of the system. As a result, each division used the system somewhat differently, with their own tables, screens, drop-down menus, etc. Faced with such diversity, it was becoming difficult, if not nearly impossible, to standardize mainwww.uptimemagazine.com Vale Inco: Foresight Pays Off In preparing this article, I interviewed Trevor Amell, an IT Project Manager at Vale Inco. Trevor and Denis Deschamps (Business Systems Coordinator) were responsible for overseeing the implementation and rollout of the eMESA solution at the company. According to Trevor, the company has certainly realized its initial goals with the eMESA solution, and then some. Following are a few advantages of the eMESA implementation the company has highlighted thus far. • The user community fully and rapidly accepted the new method of entering and updating work orders and other maintenance related data. The company reports literally “no 23 http://www.reliability.com.au/sapimplementation http://www.reliability.com.au/sapimplementation http://www.uptimemagazine.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Uptime Magazine - October/November 2008

Uptime Magazine - October/November 2008 Contents Upfront Upclose: An Asset Management Oasis in the Desert Information Technology: Streamlining Through Simplicity Lubrication: Phases for Framing a Solid Foundation Infrared: Do Your Homework Before You Buy Maintenance Management: Get It Together by Getting Together Motor Testing: Key Elements in Motor Decision Making Precision Maintenance: Shedding Some Light on Tolerances Reliability: RCM & the Mortgage Meltdown Ultrasound: A Multidimensional Tool Vibration: The Whirling Pump Mystery, Solved with ODS Upgrade: Are You Looking in the Right Place for Your Wear Debris?

Uptime Magazine - October/November 2008

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