Improving Plant Productivity with Automation Asset Performance Management (APM)

As businesses strive to improve the bottom line and gain a competitive advantage, improving operational efficiency is one of the key objectives for manufacturing plants. This requires that plant assets run at peak productivity levels, producing high-quality products at the right time while also ensuring compliance with health and safety regulations.

Plant operators have long considered increased availability and utilization, coupled with minimized downtime (both planned and unplanned), to be the most levers to maximize productivity. Traditionally, operators have adopted preventive maintenance practices to minimize unscheduled downtime. While these may help avert some potential issues, studies have found that most of these periodic maintenance checks can actually be avoided. Preventive maintenance is not only labor-intensive, but it also does not eliminate the possibility of catastrophic failures.