Although safety and risk mitigation is a fundamental part of creating value and boosting profits, it is not the end of the story when it comes to asset management. To realize the true value of an asset across its entire lifecycle, a business must ensure it has a set of key building blocks in place. These consist of forward-looking management structures and processes that adopt a broader perspective than just identifying and addressing threats and vulnerabilities.

Just in case you or someone you know is experiencing an undesirable work environment, the author shares this brief recap of a maintenance turnaround plan. Warning: Leading a maintenance turnaround is not for the faint of heart. It takes guts, vitamins and a lot of prayers, in addition to a good plan.

The function of reliability is still so tightly married to maintenance that it is often perceived to be the only combination that can unlock all challenges related to an asset. But can maintenance alone handle all aspects of reliability throughout the lifecycle of an asset? What if the asset has inherent design flaws or inadequate commissioning procedures? What if it is being operated outside of its operating parameters? Such issues are related to engineering and operations, which are outside of the maintenance scope.

In late May, Uptime Publisher Terrence O’Hanlon posted on LinkedIn that attendance at maintenance conferences has dropped significantly. Responses to his post offered plausible reasons, including budget constraints, lack of content, recurring content, and total saturation. While these are no doubt contributors, there may be one more growing reason for this decline: more and more organizations are finally recognizing that maintenance is not the source of their competitive or financial problems. This article provides proof for why this reason may be on point.

Lack of investment in maintenance could potentially have costly consequences. Besides safety risks, defects in power stations often result in cost-intensive remediation measures and temporary loss of power production. The ideal maintenance strategy is about applying the right measures at the right times. However, there are no silver bullets for power station maintenance.

Excessive heat in a manufacturing or warehouse environment has negative effects on workers, production levels and even the quality of produced or stored goods. This is a growing concern because today’s North American industries are being pressed hard to match offshore production options. Fortunately there are plant cooling solutions that can solve this problem.