World Grain - April 2022 - 55

Figure 1
Asset management maturity
Innocence
Awareness
Understanding
Competance
Excellence
Timeline
Maintenance is an expense
Maintenance is an investment
cluding but not limited to those shown in Table 2 (page 54)and
had been employed in many other industries began to be discussed
and used in the milling and grain processing industry.
Preventive: 2020s
Advancing from preventive to predictive maintenance is
based not only on equipment but utilization of sensors and
devices connecting via the Internet of Things (IoT), allowing
for analysis of data to develop a predictive forecast.
Collecting and analyzing historical data remains an essential
component of predictive maintenance. The data collected
must be accurate, reliable and timely. Analysis and
predictive forecast strategies must be flexible to meet changing
needs.
Risk-based assessment of the predictive forecast must be
developed to prioritize maintenance activity. This will permit
maintenance skill sets to be deployed to address the critical
few rather than the trivial many maintenance challenges. For
example, it may be more critical to maintain the wheat transfer
system to the mill than a wheat unloading system with a
full grain storage elevator.
Preventive maintenance methodologies introduced in the
2010s have become more advanced and improved in scope
and capability with greater use in the milling and grain processing
industry. Millers and milling engineers will use IoT
and the power of data collection and analysis to develop Artificial
Intelligence (AI) to evolve more efficient grain conversion
processes in addition to reliability maintenance.
Maintenance plays a critical role in mill asset manageWorld-Grain.com
/ World Grain / April 2022
ment. A white paper published by IBM Global Services in
2007 entitled " The Evolution of Asset Management-Finding
the Right Best Practices is Not All Theory, " presents an enterprise
asset management maturity model. Over time, asset
management moves from relative innocence through awareness,
understanding, competence and excellence. In the beginning,
maintenance is viewed as an expense. But as asset
management maturity develops, maintenance is viewed
more as an investment. From a business perspective, maintenance
and spare parts expenses gradually decrease as reliability
and performance gradually increases. The decrease in
maintenance and spare parts cost intersects at a high level of
understanding nearing competence. Figure 1 (above) graphically
summarizes the concept of asset management maturity
with respect to maintenance.
The primary mill maintenance goal should be to ensure the
milling asset is available for operation 100% of planned operating
time (100% reliability). Every piece of equipment is
important and can put the mill down or cause inferior product
quality, reduced production rate or yield. Make sure your
production and maintenance staffs both understand how various
pieces of equipment work, signs of equipment failure and,
most importantly, communicate and work together.
Are you ready for industry 4.0?
Jeff Gwirtz, a milling industry consultant, is president of JAG Services, Inc.
He may be reached at jgwirtz@att.net.
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55
Source: IBM/ABB
Maintenance and spare parts costs
Reliablity and performance
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