Autonomous Maintenance can be a strong driver for the improvement of asset performance and business value. The practice entails sharing responsibility for the maintenance of assets between the Operations and Maintenance departments; Machine operators perform smaller maintenance tasks such as lubrication, cleaning and safety checks whereas maintenance teams focus on more complicated maintenance tasks and on effectiveness improvements. Production output can significantly benefit from implementing this strategy. Additionally, if you are ready to take the next steps in Digital Transformation, Autonomous Maintenance could be a valuable part of your strategy.
The benefits of Autonomous Maintenance
First-line maintenance, as Autonomous Maintenance is also called, can increase the effectiveness of the equipment (or: Overall Equipment Effectiveness – OEE) in several ways. Our consultants name these benefits based on their deployment experience at asset heavy companies around the world:
The maintenance team has time to focus on more complicated maintenance and asset management activities. This includes longer-term strategy enhancements which helps with improving production output and realizing sustainable asset performance.
Another benefit of having maintenance workers being able to focus on complex work means that the company does not have to revert that work to suppliers. Knowledge and expertise will stay (and grow further) in-house.
Operators feel a higher sense of ownership over the condition of assets which helps to avoid failure and safety risks.
Because less people are needed on the shop floor, the risk of contamination is lower. This increases the level of production output.
Operators are able to perform basic maintenance tasks regularly and more often (if needed), achieving a better or optimal level of operations for the machines.
Sharing ownership and responsibility promotes collaboration and unity. This benefits the organizational culture, collaborative efforts and, in the end, the business objectives.
With this setup, both the maintenance and operations teams get the opportunity to develop skills and experience. Maintenance can focus on improving knowledge of more complex jobs while operators deepen their expertise as they will learn more about how equipment works and how to handle it.
Six Critical Success Factors
If Autonomous Maintenance is new to the organization then this brings a great change with it.
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- Improving internal collaboration and asset performance for a manufacturing plant for packaging materials
- Asset Improvement Program
- Asset management training and coaching
- Infographic: 5 Benefits of Tracking Equipment Downtime
- Checklist: Preventive vs Predictive Maintenance
- Reliability Metrics 101: Mean Downtime
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