Streamlining Your Chemical Industry Business with an Asset Maintenance System

Significance of maintenance in chemical industries

Chemical industries house a range of equipment covering hand tools, laboratory instruments, and heavy equipment.

It has penetrated nearly every aspect of our lives, from food, clothing, healthcare products, fuel, etc. A minor variation in environmental conditions(pH, moisture, pressure, temperature, etc.) can mutate chemicals that pose significant risks.

Chemical plants are generally antique! Upon examining the maintenance history of chemical plants, we find most of them poorly maintained for decades.

The life expectancy of some facilities has shrunk considerably. Maintenance planning has now become crucial for the stable and hazard-free operation of chemical plants.

Plant maintenance challenges

Asset data, which is imperative for proper maintenance, is spread across various systems. Mere fetching of the data is a challenge.

In such a case, it is needless to mention the accuracy and reliability of the fetched data!

Factors such as surging electricity and fuel expenses, logistic expenses, and sudden equipment breakdown cost trouble the chemical industry.

Unplanned downtime is a handicap to regular production operations as paper-based work order management provides no quick and wise remedy.

Performing preventive maintenance was an ineffective task owing to the limitations of conventional paper-based procedures in providing real-time visibility of the work to the asset managers.

Realizing the detrimental impact of the above aspects, plant and refinery owners have resorted to automation of maintenance management in recent years to preserve the century-old assets and provide a safer work environment for employees.

Digital approach to factory maintenance

A chemical company is well-run only if no maintenance repairs occur without a digital work order.

A well-constructed and routed digital work order accelerates the work at each stage.

A strong process with time-bound Service Level Agreements, a clear definition of approvers, multiple and multi-level automatic reminders, and escalations expedite work.

Every work order is traceable and assigned with the right priorities, and there is a clear record of who worked on what, time duration, task re-assignment, etc.

An excellent culture of work transparency prevails.

An Enterprise Asset Management solution promotes quickness and a rising-to-the-occasion approach in executing work orders with the auto-assign concept.

When scheduled PPM tasks open, they can be auto-assigned based on service categories or user groups.

Any group member volunteers to self-assign the task upon which it gets disabled for the rest.

The SLA definition governs the maximum time a ticket or schedule can be unassigned.

Effective inventory management

When it comes to the Chemical Industry, safe storage and handling of hazardous chemicals is of paramount importance to prevent accidents.

Improper storage conditions can lead to repetitive purchases of costly chemicals.

The lack of a proper inventory management system prevents the procurement department from arriving at accurate, timely, and cost-effective decisions.

Quality control has to be an intrinsic part of receiving goods from suppliers. It is necessary to check and return sub-standard goods.

An EAM software features an inventory management system for well-organized and easily retrievable storage with optimal inventory levels.

Inventory managers can easily keep track of inventory stock using attributes such as expiry date, GRN, UOM, minimum re-order levels, etc. 

The benefits of EAM software

Respond quickly to breakdowns through EAM software. Be proactive in maintenance and plant safety with complete asset records and activity logs.

Make the most of equipment and spare warranty with a unique workflow. Let your team continue work offline to ensure flawless and on-time maintenance.

You can track the entire asset life cycle from the purchase to recycling to extract its best value at each stage.

EAM software enriches your maintenance teams with all the data and tools needed to carry out thousands of maintenance schedules or corrective maintenance across all your chemical factories in well-coordination from a centralized location.

All this without diluting the quality of maintenance or creation of chaos.

Maintenance teams can save a great deal of effort, time, and delays while upholding their positive image with the digital transformation of maintenance operations.

The power of IoT

Digital EAM coupled with IoT solutions can provide out-of-the-box capabilities with real-time notification of dangerous faults such as leakages in tanks containing fluids.

It can raise alarms about the sudden release of harmful gases into the plant’s indoor or outdoor atmosphere to your mobile devices while you are away.

It lightens the responsibility of safety on the shoulders of plant managers.

Metric rich and customizable Dynamic Dashboard

To be smart, maintenance managers should know the big picture on current progress anytime at a glance at the Dashboard.

They should be able to track asset condition, maintenance history, performance, and current workload of techs in a few clicks.

Define the visualization in the Dashboard for each user role as per your wish, choose the visual that matches your taste and preferences, and switch between the choices. Relocate the widgets as you wish.

This is the true flexibility of going Digital for maintenance management.

Your EAM must provide any critical to operation(CTO) and critical to quality(CTQ) analytics and metrics that matter to you the most.

Check the presence of these features in the EAM you choose to modernize your business.

Easy rehearsal to face external audits

Thwart accidents and achieve compliance with automation of preventive, condition-based, and corrective maintenance.

Automate asset audits to uncover issues of duplicate and damaged assets.

An EAM empowers you to carry out internal audits very quickly and accurately and gain the confidence to face any surprise external audits from regulatory bodies.

Keep the ball rolling by infusing a culture of transparency, completeness, and excellence in operations with the magic touch of digitization!