Maintenance today – digital and integrated, or what?
We want to shop, move around, live and exist. Every day. This is made possible by our industry. To avoid supply bottlenecks, we must prevent failures – maintenance is coming into focus.
Every era has its technologies. Maintenance is no different. However, it took years and decades for digitalisation to also enter this area of industry. Today, we speak of modern maintenance. But what does that entail?
One thing is clear: maintenance is essential. And it is becoming increasingly important. Our expectations are rising. Also thanks to and because of digitalisation. We want to have things, experience things, eat things, whenever and wherever we want. Ideally around the clock. This increases the pressure on industry and the utilisation and operating times of plants. Downtime is death. In industry, quite literally.
Integrated and digital for maintenance success?
When modern maintenance is mentioned, two words always come up: digital and integrated. This is how maintenance should be today. While 'digital' immediately evokes associations with IT systems or mobile devices like smartphones, the topic of 'integrated' is somewhat harder to grasp. So let us first delve into these two core concepts.
Integrated
Integrated means that people from the operational area are involved in maintenance work. This has the advantage that they are the ones who know the machines and equipment best, as they operate them practically every day. Their plant-specific experience holds immense potential for know-how. This must be leveraged for modern maintenance.
Digital
In production, 'digital' has long been the order of the day. Plants, control systems, environmental sensors, and much more continuously generate data that serve as a basis for acute operational decisions. So why not use this for maintenance? The analysis of such data and the application of machine learning networks can provide new insights and even predict impending failures in modern maintenance, keyword predictive maintenance.
The advantages seem obvious: digital and integrated maintenance promises intelligent processes and faster throughput times, especially as tasks and processes can be directly entered into digital systems on-site with appropriate modern IT solutions. Errors in transferring handwritten records and cumbersome paperwork are eliminated.
SRB helps – the future of maintenance thanks to SAP IT
So, on to the modern maintenance future? One might think so. However, many domestic companies are still hesitant due to the complexity and changes that such comprehensive IT solutions entail. Admittedly: the first step towards a maintenance modernisation project is difficult, as the mountain to climb looks quite high. But that’s where we come in. We accompany you with our know-how on your journey and help you overcome the hurdles that stand in the way of your maintenance success.
As already mentioned: every era has its technologies that enable new, comprehensive solutions. Today, with S/4HANA, the digital twin via SAP Intelligent Asset Management (IAM), SAP Asset Manager, and frameworks for the speed start of custom developments, there are more possibilities in maintenance than ever before. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, we have created an overview of the current SAP Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) architecture by SRB.
SAP standard tools thus form the basis. Our know-how and our in-house developments, such as theSRB Maintenance Cockpithelp us tailor the maintenance solution precisely to you. Integrated and aligned with the wishes of your employees as well as your very specific local conditions, for example regarding safety.
Success proves us right
What modern maintenance can look like in reality is demonstrated by numerous projects we have had the privilege to implement with and for our clients in recent years. For example, atOMVhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofJvhKANz3M&t=868s&ab_channel=KBOriginals. Here we implemented a solution with the OMV Field Service App that not only elevates maintenance at OMV to a new level but has also caused a stir in the industry: the app won theMaintainer Innovation Award 2020.If you want to know more about how you too can benefit from modern, that is, digital and integrated maintenance powered by SAP and SRB, simply contact me at
m.scheiner@srb.atmailto:m.scheiner@srb.at..
