Asset care eats up a lot of spend – from acquiring and storing parts to maintenance. By optimizing these processes with machine health monitoring, manufacturers can save time and money, allowing resources to be allocated toward other aspects of production.
Manufacturing production depends on machines, and keeping these machines running is critical. Traditionally, manufacturers have taken a more preventive than predictive approach: machines are serviced on fixed schedules, whether they need the maintenance or not. This means higher spending because of labor hours allocated to service machines that don’t need it or padding inventory without cause.
When you break down M&R budgets, large portions of expenditures are related to the acquisition and storage of spare parts. Many manufacturers keep these in inventory because calendar-based maintenance dictates when parts should be replaced – even if replacement is not needed. They’re trying to avoid the alternative: overspending up to five times the price trying to get parts on short notice and experiencing more downtime waiting for the parts to arrive with today’s record lead times. Whether spending money to hoard parts or paying more for last-minute parts, both methods are inefficient and harmful to a manufacturer’s bottom line.
What’s more, preventive maintenance focuses your maintenance crews away from higher-level tasks. To keep up with scheduled maintenance, teams are needed on the shop floor to do rounds on each asset, and even more work is needed when machines break down. To save costs on these unnecessary and unexpected expenses, it’s time to focus on asset optimization.
How to Optimize Care Costs
Optimizing care costs means providing the right level of maintenance for every asset, eliminating unnecessary maintenance tasks, and improving maintenance planning. There will always be fixed costs for any production facility, but variable costs can be better managed to ensure manufacturers only spend where it’s really needed – freeing up capital to invest elsewhere.
Optimization doesn’t happen in one day. It depends on the current asset data you have, and it’s an evolutionary process that never truly stops. It’s best to view the process and its benefits in phases that work best for your operations.
For example, you might begin by working to reduce downtime. Once that’s been improved, the next step might be optimizing spare parts inventory before turning a focus toward maintenance schedules.
Working with machine health, Augury’s solutions support your asset optimization goals in a number of ways:
1) Improved Data
With continuous monitoring and advanced AI, Augury’s Machine Health Solutions provide real-time visibility into the health of your critical and supporting equipment. With more insights into machine performance across your production lines, you can make data-driven maintenance decisions and strategies.
2) Optimized Manufacturer Support
Manufacturers don’t need to rely on route- or time-based approaches to avoid equipment malfunction or failure. With machine health, they can gain control of their maintenance schedules, deciding how to spend money and time based on every asset’s condition.
3) Managed Costs
Our insights identify wear and tear patterns on equipment, so you can better forecast the life cycle of parts, making sure you have the right part on hand only when you need it.
4) Maximized Efficiency
Implementing a strategic, autonomous method of machine monitoring frees up time for less tedious work. Using Augury’s insights, technicians are alerted when a machine has problems and notified about how to fix them. They can focus on addressing root causes instead of completing unnecessary routine tasks.
Manufacturers are always seeking ways to improve their means of production. Industrial equipment can be difficult and expensive to procure and maintain. But with a machine health program, you can understand your assets and increase their life cycles, all while reducing M&R costs. Optimizing assets means optimizing business and, ultimately, every aspect of your production line.
Do you want to learn more about how Augury can help you optimize asset care costs? Reach out!
