WEBINAR - Leveraging AI to Improve Up-time and reduce cost in process operations

Operators typically spend over 30% of their operating expenses (OPEX) on unplanned maintenance. According to an ARC survey, companies have been losing between 3 and 5% of their production to unplanned downtime. In an effort to combat these operational challenges, operators have been armed with "digitisation," and leading the charge for operators is "asset performance management (APM)," which is synonymously used with various acronyms, but most commonly condition monitoring (CM). The general approach of all of these solutions is to leverage data sources to generate asset models or KPI reports to provide additional information. Despite the bold claims of solution providers to reduce unplanned downtime, operators have not been able to leverage the technology to its full potential. In TÜV Rheinland's experience, this has been due to the disconnect between people, processes, and technology. More often than not, the technology is deployed in isolation without evaluating the organisation's needs or priorities. In digital transformation, the digital maturity of an organisation should always be understood and factored into transformations. The output from this process is used to identify the stepping stones for organisational transformation by highlighting the risks and benefits of a transformation process. The generated information can be used to develop a digital roadmap that takes into account an organisation's readiness and available resources, while highlighting the benefits that will be realised. To achieve the objective of reducing downtime, operators must combine the digital roadmap with the reliability centred maintenance (RCM) approach. RCM is a systematic approach to identify the criticality of assets and determining the most cost-effective maintenance strategy for each asset. RCM considers the function of the asset, the potential failure, and the consequences of failure. Coupling the understanding of where and how critical assets fail with an organisations ability to adopt and leverage digital technologies will initiate the journey to improve operations and ultimately drive reliability across the organisation.