Beyond Maintenance: A Holistic Approach to Boost Equipment Availability

Beyond Maintenance: A Holistic Path to Higher Availability

Many operators conflate availability with reliability, but the two are distinct metrics. Availability measures the proportion of planned production time during which equipment is actually ready to produce, expressed as a percentage. Overall availability, by contrast, uses the entire calendar period as its divisor.

Despite its importance, most plants do not have a dedicated reliability engineering function or a structured program that targets reliability directly. While quality and maintenance initiatives may touch on equipment performance, they rarely include explicit reliability improvement measures.

Responsibility for reliability spans the entire plant. Maintenance is critical, yet production, plant engineering, purchasing, sales, and training each influence equipment performance. A narrow focus on maintenance alone masks many root causes.

Common perception holds that poor maintenance limits capacity, quality, and profit. In reality, the majority of reliability issues arise from elsewhere: flawed operating procedures, sub‑optimal design, or inappropriate production scheduling.

Asset Dependability Starts with Design and Selection

Plant engineering and purchasing must embed reliability into the specification and selection process. Decisions should weigh life‑cycle cost, maintainability, and the skill level required for operation and maintenance. Purchase price alone is a misleading metric for equipment cost or its long‑term impact on plant performance.

Purchasing also plays a decisive role in component selection for both maintenance and production. Selecting vendors based solely on cost can erode reliability. For instance, one client chose a lighter‑duty bearing for a critical exhaust fan because it was $5 cheaper per unit. The result was a dramatic drop in mean time between failures—from six years to six months—illustrating how cost‑driven choices can sabotage reliability.

Production: The Biggest Influence

In many plants, poor operating procedures generate 50 times more downtime than maintenance failures. Operator error is a visible contributor, but the bulk of performance losses stem from sub‑standard practices. A recent assessment of a 4‑high tandem mill revealed that 80 % of the constraints on capacity, quality, and cost were attributable to flawed operating procedures—many of which required no capital investment to rectify.

Sales & Marketing Shape Reliability

Sales strategies dictate production patterns. Short‑run, low‑quantity orders force frequent setups, stopping, and restarting—each of which diminishes reliability, raises defect rates, and reduces capacity. A robust sales program balances volume with order size, delivery schedules, and pricing to sustain smooth, continuous production flows.

Employee Skills and Standard Procedures

Operators and maintenance personnel must possess the right knowledge and follow well‑defined procedures. The training function is pivotal; without it, skill gaps widen. Inadequate standard operating and maintenance procedures often masquerade as employee failure. The remedy lies in comprehensive, data‑rich SOPs that guide every task.

Integrated Plant Functions

All functions—engineering, purchasing, production, maintenance, and training—are interdependent. No single department can achieve high availability in isolation. A coordinated, company‑wide improvement program is essential for sustainable performance gains.

Maintenance: From Quick Fixes to Prevention

Maintenance should shift from reactive repairs to proactive preservation of optimal operating conditions. Preventive and corrective tasks must be planned and scheduled to maximize resource use and plant capacity. Standard procedures—written for any qualified craftsperson—must be rigorously followed, and personnel must receive the training needed to execute them efficiently.

Conclusions

Industry research shows that maintenance accounts for less than 20 % of availability losses, while 85 % stem from other functions. A holistic, value‑added approach—standardizing practices across the plant—is the only path to true availability, quality, and cost reduction.

About the Author

Keith Mobley is a principal consultant at Life Cycle Engineering. With over 35 years of experience in corporate management, process design, and troubleshooting, he has helped hundreds of clients worldwide achieve world‑class performance. He serves on the technical advisory boards of ANSI, ISO, ASME, and others, and is a Distinguished Lecturer for ASME International. For more information, email kmobley@LCE.com or visit www.LCE.com.