Maintenance : The missed investment for stronger operations ?

Buckminster Fuller was saying : “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”. Is it the right time to build a new model for Maintenance ?

The level of information we can access today (big data, condition monitoring, artificial intelligence, etc…) has generated stronger expectations in terms of flexibility to drive a business, and of course profitability. It was just a question of time before reliability was impacted by this trend as unexpected shutdowns do still unfortunately occur and maintenance does still exist.

This highlights the critical trigger to take into consideration between information and knowledge. Cumulating an amazing amount of data does not mean erasing potential shutdowns or technical issues. The fast growth of technology introduces a new level of complexity while people still have to maintain the oldest generation of equipment.

The aim of this article is then to share ideas and help to find the way out of the labyrinth where we are all stuck in most of our decision chains. Fighting uncertainty and lack of reliability with data does not take over for the experience (and knowledge) lost which is much more difficult to transfer than information is to collect, at least for industrial operations. Meanwhile, we will try to identify how to make the decision process easier by highlighting the most critical items to take into consideration, like the following questions which should support any business case :

• What do I want to achieve ?
• Why do I want/need to do it ?
• How can I do it or how will I check the results ?