preventive maintenance

All oil and gas exploration and processing projects should be supported with a tailored strategy for their maintenance and inspection requirements, and facilities should be started up with their Maintenance and Inspection program properly defined by function and should be readied in systems that will support the execution of that work. These are typically big support activities covering all equipment and their sub-assemblies.

Over the past year I've worked with Terry O'Hanlon to do a series of webinars on the most popular tools in the market place for improving manufacturing/operational performance in industrial plants. As part of these webinars, we've asked participants to answer a set of questions related to their practices to get a sense of how well they were working. Many of their responses were encouraging - 42% are working to apply lean manufacturing principles, of which 70% of those say its working; many are using the various tools in a sustainable way. And, more than 95% rated safety as a top priority.

This work analyzes both profile and role of the maintenance man within the framework of current and future developments in the maintenance function. In times when other company functions are subject to automation, robotics and tend to the elimination of people at the worksite, maintenance appears as a typically human task that makes an irreplaceable contribution to modern companies' competitiveness.

We have studied the conceptual and organizational references that now determine the maintenance function as well as current trends and concluded upon the requirements that the maintenance professional must fulfill in order to do his job effectively, i.e., as stated in the definition of the maintenance function, to assure company competitiveness.