Breakdowns in the metals industry can mean catastrophic failure. Failures spell disaster with a capital D for heavy industrial machinery (many times one of a kind foundry-poured equipment) and can be extremely dangerous for plant employees. Premium maintenance of equipment and safe execution by labor are the key focus for management. The use of a CMMS in this volatile primary metals environment improves equipment reliability through automation of work management and increased preventive maintenance practices--a necessity for cost effective operations.

The use of CMMS initially focuses on organizational moves from reactive to proactive maintenance practices. After a period of time, the CMMS becomes a corporate information warehouse storing multitudes of detailed data on vital operational elements such as procedures, assets, inventories, labor, vendors, and safety. Later, the CMMS systems emerge in the enterprise as fundamental analysis tools for operational improvements that are critical to the competitive nature of the primary metals industry today.

The primary metals industry encompasses companies that smelt and refine ferrous and non-ferrous metals from ore, pig, or scrap. Companies in the industry are also concerned with the alloying and formation of these metals which include steel works, blast furnaces, rolling mills, iron and steel foundries, and metal smelting and refining.

The history of equipment failure and vendor performance is critical to improving maintenance practices. With these developments, CMMS technology houses real-time information exchange on the health of vital plant equipment.

The processes of material production, forming, and machining involve the around-the-clock use of complex machinery in extreme temperature environments. Maintenance professionals in this industry not only face one of the most demanding work atmospheres in manufacturing, they also face continued pressures to keep costs down in a highly competitive market. In recent years, performance and profitability improvements have been the primary focus of the U. S. metals industry as increased foreign competition has driven pricing down. Maintenance professionals are turning to computerized maintenance management systems to achieve efficiency improvements and cost savings.

Emergence of CMMS
In many respects, the evolution of CMMS technology parallels other segments of enterprise computing. Key among these is the general trend toward increased automation--the computerization of business processes to increase productivity, decrease redundancy, eliminate paperwork, and minimize human error. In the past, many companies adopted, or developed internally, stand-alone systems to handle discrete maintenance-related activities such as inventory, purchasing, or work management. Unfortunately, this strategy often resulted in the phenomenon known as islands of technology--proprietary, incompatible systems that couldn't communicate with one another.

As a result, steel and other metal companies are looking to integrate comprehensive, client/server CMMS solutions that address the full range of maintenance contingencies that affect the typical processing plant. The new software technologies seamlessly integrate work order, preventive maintenance, inventory, purchasing, safety, and resource planning modules. The integration not only automates maintenance operations, but actually analyzes and improve maintenance practices with the compilation of valuable information.

While these modular, full-featured systems can represent a significant investment for a firm, they deliver important benefits. The use of CMMS has a dramatic impact on the success of an organization. It does this by minimizing MRO inventory, improving availability of production equipment, helping to plan efficient execution of emergency and preventive maintenance tasks, and collecting historical data for analysis. The history of equipment failure and vendor performance is critical to improving maintenance practices. A full-featured CMMS allows organizations to streamline and consolidate maintenance processes so that workers in different areas of the plant--or on different continents--are using proven, efficient procedures.

The focus: "Keep it reliable and running"
In the steel industry, for example, the challenges for maintenance managers include enormous and unique industrial equipment, potentially hazardous materials and conditions, hundreds of maintenance personnel, and plant sizes measured in square miles, not square feet. Automation of work order management and preventive maintenance is crucial for this type of operation.

Proper preventive maintenance work in a steel mill ensures that production keeps humming on the multi-ton cranes and lifts, melting furnaces, 200-ton steel/slab transporters, and casting and rolling mills. Using CMMS technology, maintenance work is not only scheduled, it's automated to ensure the availability of craftsmen, tools, and spare parts. CMMS work order and preventive maintenance modules provide maintenance engineers quick access to vital information and the ability to perform functions like:
 

•  view detailed planning information (work plan, schedule, costs, labor, materials, equipment, safety, failure analysis and related documents),
•  record maintenance work and close work orders from the shop floor,
•  schedule work orders based on real-time update of criticality,
•  reserve parts for each work order based on job plan estimates, and
•  generate preventive maintenance work orders for completion during planned and unplanned shutdowns.

Safety
Whether it's melt shops, continuous casters, or the rolling mill, the production environment in the metals industry is marked by high temperatures and extremely hazardous molten metals. It is no wonder that employee safety is an important priority. Maintenance crews are also concerned with proper handling of environmental equipment used with material and water wastes.

Due to regulatory requirements such as those mandated by OSHA and EPA, maintenance crews require the ability to easily associate safety requirements and procedures with work orders. Employers must be able to show that employees have been informed of hazards that they may encounter while performing work as well as informing them of actions necessary to prevent accidents. Job plans tied to work packages and equipment information provide maintenance workers with up-to-date information which can be crucial to procedures, hazard precautions, and engineering specifications.

The actions necessary to prevent accidents may be as simple as requiring the worker to wear personal protective equipment such as goggles or steel-toed boots or to obtain a confined space entry permit that requires recording air quality test results. The actions may be complicated such as requiring that several machines be shut down. In that case, the work order must include the procedure for safely shutting down the equipment and maintaining the equipment in the shutdown state until the work is completed and the equipment may be put back in service. This process is commonly referred to as lock-out/tag-out procedures.

In both cases, simple or complicated, safety requirements and procedures are a function of the equipment being worked on, the type of work being done, and the safety requirements and procedures of other nearby equipment. Robust CMMS functionality includes the ability to handle every aspect of work-related safety. Users define Hazards, Precautions, Hazardous Materials, Tagout Procedures, and Lock Out Operations that develops safety plans to be associated with work orders.

The CMMS technology also becomes an essential archive, electronically documenting histories on work orders, preventive maintenance procedures, readings, and procedures for regulatory and standards compliance, such as OSHA, EPA, and ISO 9000.

Technology--in the hands of the maintenance crews
New innovations in CMMS technology include point-of-performance components used with industrial strength, hand-held devices. This solution offers interactive procedural logic that ensures accuracy in execution by walking craftsmen through the steps of a job plan. Unlike checks using a paper-based or electronic format, the interactive logic is context sensitive. It provides varying instruction scenarios based on temperature readings or other variables. Employees using this technology have point-of-performance access to data that was once considered out-of-reach. Integrating this technology with a bar-coded equipment labeling program allows for a level of procedural compliance that satisfies the most rigorous regulatory requirements. Workers have access to historical data that facilitates the type of decision-making that the demanding primary metals environment requires.

The rapid benefits of automation and analysis
In today's competitive environment, automation is not enough. Analysis of procedures achieves true best practices. Contemporary CMMS technology provides engineers and management with the actual transaction data necessary for making informed decisions. Using CMMS analyzing and Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) tools, users rapidly produce effective analysis of equipment failures, vendor performance, MRO materials forecasting, and much more. Users of CMMS realized cost savings in the millions of dollars. The cost savings are achieved through reductions in inventory, control of outside labor, and increases in preventive maintenance which significantly reduces costly reactive work.

Central to operations--not an add-on
The dramatic increase in the use of CMMS technology among metal companies stems from several factors:
 

•  a quantum leap in the sophistication level of this technology during recent years,
•  the advent of providers who can deliver this capability throughout the world's largest concerns, and
•  the increasing pressures resulting from the kinds of business issues that CMMS technology was specifically designed to address.

As a result of these factors, asset maintenance has emerged as an area in which many companies can increase efficiencies and eliminate costs throughout the enterprise. For that reason, many of the world's leading metals firms feel that the time is right to make a strategic investment in a comprehensive CMMS solution.