Rubber and plastics manufacturing presents maintenance challenges similar to those found in most manufacturing segments. Beyond simply monitoring overall plant maintenance performance, CMMS software in this industry should support improvements in:
 

•  equipment availability,
•  production capacity,
•  inventory management,
•  availability of critical equipment,
•  number of open work orders, and
•  unnecessary labor costs.

Special challenges in rubber manufacturing
Rubber manufacturing is different from many industrial segments in that many operations are strictly proprietary. Some production machinery is designed, manufactured and maintained completely in-house. Rubber manufacturing thus constitutes a manufacturing operation (machinery) within a manufacturing operation (rubber). The CMMS software must be able to accommodate such a two-tiered manufacturing operation maintained by a single maintenance staff.

For example, common supplies, such as fasteners, bearings, seals should be ordered under one purchase order for both operations and maintained in a common inventory. The system should store and link equipment fabrication specifications to each internally built item.

Special challenges in plastics manufacturing
Plastics manufacturing is a chemical process and is closely associated with Process Safety Management (PSM). Therefore, OSHA 1910.119 regulations probably apply. The CMMS must be able to capture and report safety-related incidents, as well as actions taken to prove compliance. Safety managers must be able to review and approve standard repair procedures. The CMMS must make these procedures available with each work order to promote safety awareness and reduce accidents. The software should be able to handle management of change workflow processes as well.

Good predictive and preventive maintenance keeps availability high
Production and manufacturing of rubber and plastics centers around just a few operations. Downtime in a critical system is expensive since it reduces plant capacity and revenue. Since downtime is so expensive, these industries meticulously plan and schedule shutdowns. This makes predictive maintenance economically feasible for some operations. The rubber and plastic operations seek to repair or replace each component or system just before failure. Within predictive maintenance strategies, mean-time-between-failures for critical machinery is an invaluable yardstick for maximizing plant availability and profitability. Obtaining accurate estimates of mean-time-between-failure places high importance on detailed record-keeping on each critical production component.

Operations using distributed control systems or programmable logic controllers should integrate these with the CMMS to provide immediate response to alarm conditions. Managers can load the CMMS with preplanned responses to alarms detectable by the distributed control system or programmable logic controller. The CMMS can issue work orders immediately with the proper material list, tools, instructions, skills, and safety information. This saves time in preventing outages and getting critical equipment back into operation.

Condition monitors such as vibration analyzers and infrared scanning are important technologies for detecting trouble in critical equipment. CMMS software should interface with condition monitors and other analyzers to create work orders from those systems. The CMMS can be configured to page the beepers that craft people carry to alert them to an impending failure of critical equipment.

Equipment/event record-keeping
The CMMS system should track equipment history and costs. It should maintain warranty information and an events history, providing a single repository of vital information. The system should track any type of event that occurs within a plant, including accidents, emissions, inspections, corrective actions, audits, and work orders.

The system should monitor costs and resources for any particular task and provide roll-up summaries within the plant organizational structure. The CMMS should allow for capture of detailed event data, including:
 

•  data for regulatory reports, internal reports, and drawings;
•  component, condition, and action codes for analysis; and
•  sketches.

Many rubber and plastics operations market globally. The CMMS system should, therefore, integrate with the facility's ISO 9000 program management.

Personnel record-keeping
Managing maintenance personnel in a multi-skilled environment is a critical task, especially for larger facilities. A CMMS system should be able to maintain basic information concerning employees in a master employee list, including:
 

•  individual skills,
•  pay scales,
•  craft certifications, and
•  job classifications.

The CMMS should provide resource planning and scheduling functions. It should support day-to-day schedules by simple resource leveling, as well as generating crew rotation schedules. The more complex activities such as shutdown scheduling should be handled by an interface with a commercially available formal project scheduling system. In situations that require overtime, the CMMS should support overtime administration and maintain callout lists to equalize overtime across the work force.

Preventive maintenance scheduling
The system should generate work orders automatically based on calendar or production volume, as appropriate. Supervisors should be able to view the schedule dates quickly and issue preventive maintenance work orders to take advantage of equipment downtime. For maximum maintenance productivity and plant availability, the scheduling function should make possible grouping tasks by equipment and system, a particular supervisor, a given geographical area, and additional criteria.

  The rubber and plastic operations seek to repair or replace each component or system just before failure.

Inventory management
Parts and equipment inventory management can be a challenge, especially in multiple plant environments. The CMMS should maintain cost and transaction history and generate reports on inventory evaluations, balances, and usage levels. It should make available item specifications, reorder methods, suppliers, and quantities. The system should maintain the information necessary to identify substitute parts and suppliers quickly. It should display work order reservations and allocations, unfilled (open) purchase orders and material requests. Desirable inventory features include:
 
 
 

•  listings of equipment that use a selected part (where used),
•  automatic reordering when quantities fall below minimum levels,
•  materials request initiation from any identified location,
•  issuing parts directly to a work order, a material request, an account, or a department,
•  easy bar code entry of item issues, returns and cycle-count information, and
•  auditing of material transactions and adjustments using interface data from accounting.

The CMMS should also include a dynamic reorder feature that instantly acts to restock parts consumed, maintaining critical inventories, and eliminating batch replenishment processing.

Purchasing
The CMMS system should track requisitions from initial entry and approval through purchase order issue, receipts, and invoicing, enabling the user to specify milestone events along the way for expediting notices. It should gather approvals and transmit the purchase orders to suppliers electronically. A CMMS should handle multiple currencies with ease.

  Many rubber and plastics operations market globally. The CMMS system should, therefore, integrate with the facility's ISO 9000 program management.

The software should maintain a library of standard terms and conditions clauses, along with legal terminology and other requirements. The CMMS should provide seamless support for stores replenishment, ordering direct-buy items and acquiring contract services. It should support change orders and blanket orders. The system should evaluate inventory quantities against requirements and build a daily reorder list.

Best-of-breed CMMS programs use drag-and-drop functions. This enables fast building of line items directly from a graphical equipment hierarchy and from the inventory requisition search functions. The system should support both two- and three-way matching of invoices against purchase orders. Transactions should be exportable to an external accounting system.

  Rubber manufacturing is different from many industrial segments in that many operations are strictly proprietary.

CMMS--the core of a successful productivity strategy
Outstanding CMMS functionality places a premium on the system's degree of internal integration. As changes occur in one module, the system should automatically update various data elements in other modules. The system must allow for highly organized record-keeping connected with equipment and components, labor, events and inventory. Only with this high degree of integration and ready access to comprehensive information can plants achieve maximum capacity and profit.

System adaptability and usability within the individual organization are crucial. Since some studies show that approximately half of CMMS implementations fail to meet objectives, vendor implementation assistance and ongoing support are important factors. Specifiers should regard purchase price as only one factor, given the improvement possible with a best-of-breed CMMS. Specifiers of a CMMS should predetermine objectives and then select the system best suited for the task, from a vendor with a good track record for after sale support. When implemented carefully, the CMMS thus constitutes the core of a successful productivity strategy.