Critical equipment always gives maintenance schedulers more headaches. These are extremely important pieces of equipment, which, when stopped, generate losses and inconveniences, sometimes irreparable for companies.
The maintenance manager needs to consider these assets when planning, and the correct control of equipment criticality is essential for the success of his strategy.
Thinking about the importance of this equipment, have you ever wondered what you should do to obtain security and availability of these assets? Well, follow us and learn a little more about critical equipment, criticality control, and how important this knowledge is for the success of your strategy.
What is critical equipment?
Critical equipment is any equipment that can cause some risk or failure in the company’s production, environmental, personal, or structural risk. Some are considered less critical because they have a smaller impact on production in case of stops and failures, and the scheduling of their maintenance is relatively simpler. The most critical equipment is the one whose failures cause greater risks to the company’s productivity, and its maintenance must be carefully planned so as not to harm production or avoid collateral risks.
Criticality is then the classification of equipment according to the impact they cause on the company’s production. Therefore, assets can be classified according to their criticality so that maintenance planning can be done considering the severity and degree of impact.
This criticality analysis is a fundamental strategy because it allows maintenance planning to be done when it is really necessary, which avoids waste of money and staff. With well-performed planning and maintenance being done properly, equipment reliability is increased, and management avoids unexpected downtime in production.
How to define equipment criticality?
To define equipment criticality, the ABC classification (or ABC curve) is used. This classification is a widely used method that allows the separation of assets according to the degree of impact it causes on the company’s production. Therefore, it is possible to inform you of the criticality level by questioning the asset impact on productivity. Its construction is done considering five factors at three different levels, namely:
- Safety;
- Reliability;
- Quality;
- Frequency;
- Cost.
These factors will support the equipment being classified into three categories, namely:
Class A
These are highly critical pieces of equipment that will have a great impact on production if they are damaged. They need a preventive policy of more specific analyses and methodologies such as RCM, FMECA, predictive and preventive maintenance, and failure analysis, for example.
Class B
These are equipment with medium priority in the production process. For the maintenance of this equipment, predictive maintenance, teams and improvement teams can be adopted, for example.
Class C
These are equipment that causes a low impact on production. Therefore, corrective maintenance and fault monitoring can be used, for example.
This ABC classification performed by the Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance in 1995 is the most used way to define the degree of equipment criticality in maintenance. In the following flowchart, it is possible to follow this classification more systematically.
Decision Flowchart – ABC Classification
Source: Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance – 1995
The acronyms of the flowchart correspond to:
- S: Safety and environment
- Q: Quality
- O: Condition of operation
- E: Condition of delivery
- P: Reliability (failure rate)
- M: Maintainability
With careful analysis of the equipment using the factors of the flowchart, the manager will determine the criticality level more accurately. With this, it is even possible to decide on specific reports for monitoring maintenance indicators.
To make it easier to obtain your equipment’s criticality, access our criticality matrix spreadsheet.
Why is criticality analysis important?
Maintenance management makes its decisions based on data and the history of the interventions of its equipment and according to the equipment’s criticality, as these directly interfere with the company’s production chain. Through criticality analysis, management can determine the most appropriate type of maintenance and the frequency with which it will be applied. Therefore, we can also mention advantages such as:
- More assertive strategies for maintenance management;
- Increased equipment reliability;
- Increased equipment life;
- Cost savings with unnecessary maintenance;
- Understand the effects of each piece of equipment on production.
Equipment criticality analysis prioritizes which equipment needs maintenance, so your company will be able to optimize resources, balance predictive, preventive, and corrective adjustments, and still ensure the safety of the entire team.
Critical equipment and maintenance
This equipment must have detailed maintenance control with a focus on achieving the highest horizontal reliability and MTBF.
To achieve production or work time goals for each piece of equipment, it is necessary to monitor the performance of preventive and, especially, predictive maintenance, with high frequency.
Once the department defines the equipment that presents great risks of failure (most critical), it will be possible to define action plans that can be corrective, preventive, and predictive. Thus, the process is well-directed so as not to interfere with business productivity.
Predictive procedures
With a tool specialized in maintenance control, it is possible to create predictive procedures that increase the useful life of the equipment:
- Data collected by periods, hour meter, odometer, temperature, vibration, pressure, and various types of control points;
- Alarms or automatic generation of work orders help the scheduler in planning;
- Occurrences in the services already performed, thus helping in the identification of chronic problems. The reason for this maintenance may be overload; the shaft is misaligned…
Emphasizing item 3, when you know the routine of the equipment, it is possible to look at the root of the problem.
To identify and treat problems and manage company maintenance, it is essential to have specialized software capable of planning services, performing failure analysis, generating histories, and indicating available resources, among other things.
Engeman® is a consolidated system, specialized in maintenance management, recognized for its flexibility and adaptation to the most varied realities and sizes of companies, efficient in maintenance control, and with great mobility.
Talk to our experts and learn more details!
