How talent and technology revolutionize industrial maintenance

Original air date April 2, 2020
  Achieving a world-class level of maintenance operations is a goal of today’s manufacturers in all sectors. To support those efforts, ATS and Plant Engineering magazine recently partnered to conduct a survey focused on the issues and challenges, trends and likely future developments for manufacturing maintenance. This study of the people, processes and technologies, as well as evolving strategies, is a snapshot of where your peers see themselves as they strive to achieve a truly world-class maintenance operation. Key findings included the following:
  • Seventy-six percent of manufacturing facilities follow a preventive maintenance strategy; 60% use a run-to-failure method and 52% have a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS).
  • The leading cause of unscheduled downtime within respondents’ facilities remains aging equipment (34%), followed by mechanical failure (20%) and operator error (11%).
The payoff of increased reliability and productivity — and therefore profitability — remains an incentive to reach these goals. The adoption, implementation and use of new and emerging strategies, including digital technology tools, while challenging, continues to move forward.