6 Industry Challenges PdM Can Answer!
It is no great surprise that the first benefits mentioned when thinking about Predictive Maintenance (PdM) are directly related to maintenance. However, not everyone realizes that the business case for implementing PdM is based on much more and is also supported by other stakeholders within an organization.
Industry challenges most companies face
To best explain these benefits and stakeholders, we start by describing the challenges most companies face.
- Increasing maintenance costs. The first challenge is perfectly in line with what people expect Predictive Maintenance to address: for an average company, maintenance costs are estimated to be between 15% and 40% of their total production costs and are increasing annually. The largest contributors are salaries and spare parts, together accounting for approximately 70% of maintenance costs.
- Increase in downtime costs. However, it is not only the direct maintenance costs that are increasing, the costs of downtime are also rising rapidly. There are several sources that report on the costs of downtime by industry. One of the more conservative studies shows that the average cost of downtime across all industries is €225,000 per hour (or €3,750 per minute!), an increase of 60% from just 2 years earlier. Although these figures are already quite high, it is not difficult to find reports that show significantly higher costs.
- Unexpected resource allocation. The problem with maintenance for most companies is that it is either too early or too late. 70% of companies reportedly do not have full visibility into when equipment is due for maintenance or upgrade. As a result, maintenance personnel are able to spend an average of less than 30% of their working hours on productive tasks.
- Failure to meet production targets. On average, factories lose between 5% and 20% of their productivity due to downtime, and equipment failure is estimated to cause 42% of unplanned downtime.
- Knowledge loss. For an increasing number of our clients, knowledge retention within their organization is one of the most important topics we discuss. A survey of industrial companies showed that 69% of employers are struggling to fill maintenance vacancies. As a result, they risk losing valuable insights from their more experienced employees. We have had discussions with a maintenance college that states that the demand from industry for maintenance graduates is 10(!) times higher than what the college could actually supply.
- Safety hazards. Unfortunately, fatigue of maintenance personnel regularly causes maintenance accidents and serious incidents. Furthermore, reports tell us that maintenance activities cause up to 30% of all fatal accidents in production.
How does Predictive Maintenance help with industrial challenges?
Market research firm IoT Analytics provides an overview of how deploying Predictive Maintenance will help companies address these challenges.
- Cost reduction is achieved by reducing maintenance costs and unplanned downtime.
- PdM can improve Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) because it addresses asset availability, performance and quality.
- Safety is improved by avoiding hazards, evacuations and possible fines.
- Fewer failures lead to a longer lifespan of the assets.
- Companies can better allocate their resources because predicting failures enables optimal allocation of capital, labor and spare parts.
- For example, AI & PdM can use logs, instructions and emails generated by experienced employees to retain their knowledge within the company.
- Compliance is ensured by better modeling and preparing for environmental impacts and privacy and security issues.
- By supporting the entire production process with failure data, PdM has the ability to improve overall data processes by creating a so-called 'informed culture' throughout the organization.
- After an initial PoC, it is relatively easy to scale the solution to other assets of the same type.
- Manufacturers can optimize their product development by using their maintenance data and e.g. using a digital twin, performance modeling, etc.
Industry Challenges and Predictive Maintenance – Summary
These challenges and the way PdM can address them clearly have benefits that extend beyond the maintenance department.
Although we have only listed the 6 biggest challenges for businesses today, we know that every business can face its own specific problems. We are happy to advise you on how ReliaSol's RSIMS platform can support your business!
ReliaSol will be giving a lecture at PPA 2022 entitled “AI-driven Predictive Maintenance: complex or child's play?”
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