Article contributed by Lee Todd, head of sustainability advisory services at ABB
Traditional ‘reactive’ maintenance is failing manufacturers. A modern ‘proactive’ approach can have transformative benefits in efficiency, reliability and productivity, while also rapidly accelerating the wider transition towards net zero.
For industrial facilities, the single biggest risk to operations and profitability is the unexpected loss of production. If a failure occurs, the race is then on to react quickly, identify and fix the issue or issues that caused it, and mitigate any resulting damage – as fast as possible.
Typically, electrical asset management is reactive; responding to problems that have already been identified, or manually finding and fixing nascent issues before they develop into full-blown faults. To make it more difficult, electrical equipment often does not show any outward signs of wear, even at the point of imminent failure.
Reactive maintenance can therefore be inefficient and labour...