What could be the next revolution in Industrial Maintenance? What to do in 2020 to access Industrial Maintenance as a Service (#imaas), Industry 4.0 and emerging technologies?
What is prescriptive maintenance ?
What better way than to start with a definition of the raw word: Prescriptive
"A prescriptive approach to something involves telling people what they should do, rather than simply giving suggestions or describing what is done." Source: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/prescriptive
Prescriptive maintenance is a maintenance type that offers a solution to all forms of triggers. This kind of maintenance is still conceptual and can be described differently depending on your use of the trigger. Therefore, the prescriptive maintenance will offer elements of solutions for corrective, preventive and predictive maintenance.
Take examples here:
Corrective maintenance: your machine stops suddenly - a software will be able according to the state of the machine, of the sensors or by a question asked to a conversational assistant (ChatBot) to give you elements of rapid answer for the breakdown service. This will facilitate the troubleshooting time and will educate staff in this type of situation with best practices. Thanks to a quick update of the system after each failure, faults can be eliminated.
Preventive maintenance: your machine has been producing for 200 consecutive hours - software can warn you in advance that preventive maintenance is due. It will therefore generate a digital notification / work order, showing in a very precise and consistent way the elements of the machine to be checked, helped by images, videos or even audio tracks in order to allow the technician to work with both hands. In addition, the technician will be subject to a constructive education through best practices.
Predictive maintenance: your machine observes a high oil temperature - in addition to indicating a high temperature detected, the software will give you elements of solutions in order to prevent a future breakdown. Again, very precisely, actions will have to be taken, thus promoting the reliability of your equipment.
How to access Prescriptive Maintenance ?
Industrial maintenance evolves day by day, but in a very disparate way. Large industrial companies (top 50 in the world) develop fully automated internal systems, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, big data, effective predictive maintenance ... But as a consultant in improvement of industrial maintenance, what I see on the factory floor is really different. The majority of industrial companies use aging software and at most little detailed preventive maintenance. For example: Grease the machine ... Can we consider this as a preventive instruction leading to reliability?
So here is my reality, we are digging a huge gap between these two worlds, which will only amplify the difficulties of transitions to predictive or prescriptive for "late" companies.
OEMs are the key
Yes, you read that right, it's time for the Industrial Maintenance industry to face disruptive innovation. And that goes through OEM Industrial Maintenance as a Service (#imaas). It's time to standardize the approach to Maintenance and the only way to change for most businesses it is to buy a machine delivered with #imaas !!!!
OEM manuals: OEM manuals should be digitalised and accessible from a standardised platform (e.g. ISO based). The instructions for operators and technicians working on the same machines around the world would be the same. NOTE: Why are they still delivering .pdf manuals in 2020?
Customer feedback: Machine manufacturers should collect through this platform all customer feedback in order to continuously improve their instructions and therefore the reliability of their machines and their brand image. NOTE: Why don't the best reliability engineers in the world work for OEMs?
Customer service: the customer service of machine manufacturers should be automated using current technologies, conversational assistants (ChatBot). On the one hand it will reduce the cost of customer service for OEMs and on the other hand, customers could receive answers to 85% of their questions instantly.
Communication protocols: It will take time but the communication protocols (enabling Industry 4.0 and IIOT - Industrial Internet of Things) will necessarily be simplified and standardized in the near future. It is a bit like Bluetooth, Wifi and USB-C for the phone industry. NOTE: Standardisation in any way must serves customers. Happy customers, happy business!
Conclusion
WE SUCK AT MAINTENANCE. Prescriptive Maintenance can be a strong response to a drastic change that Industrial Maintenance badly needs. The first OEMs who will succeed (big or small) in pivoting their business models towards service delivery will certainly be the big winners in the coming decades.
You can start now #imaas by contacting us for more information.
I hope this article sheds some light on the subject.
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Thank you for your time.
This article is based on suggestions and personal studies aimed at generalising information. Please be respectful in your comments.