Identifying critical and non-critical industrial equipment is essential for enterprises to streamline maintenance procedures effectively. By prioritizing critical assets, businesses can optimize the allocation of resources and efforts, ultimately enhancing operational efficiency. Critical assets, when identified accurately, offer the greatest potential to propel the company towards its strategic objectives. To determine asset criticality and tailor maintenance practices accordingly, enterprises can leverage enterprise asset management software. This technology aids in streamlining maintenance processes, ensuring that critical equipment receives dedicated attention for uninterrupted operations. By recognizing and differentiating between critical and non-critical industrial assets, enterprises can proactively manage their equipment to drive sustainable business growth.

Why Determining Criticality of an Asset is Important?

Assessing the criticality of industrial equipment is a nuanced task requiring a strategic approach. One method involves evaluating the potential impact of equipment failure on business operations. By analyzing the repercussions on factors like customer satisfaction, brand reputation, and productivity, businesses can pinpoint crucial assets vital to seamless functioning. Additionally, conducting bottleneck analysis provides insights into equipment interdependencies, highlighting key assets essential for preventing operational delays. For instance, equipment such as printing presses in a print shop or cranes in industrial settings are deemed critical due to their pivotal role in sustaining operations. Essential assets like these, if compromised, could result in severe consequences affecting health, safety, the environment, or customer relations. Understanding the criticality of industrial equipment aids businesses in prioritizing maintenance and optimizing operational efficiency to mitigate potential risks and ensure uninterrupted workflow.

Classification of Assets Based on Criticality

Assets classified by criticality, critical assets are vital, any disruption impacts significantly. High criticality assets are crucial, downtime leads to major losses. Medium criticality assets are important but not essential, low criticality assets have minimal impact if unavailable. Companies prioritize maintenance and resource allocation to protect the most vital assets. The following rating of asset criticality can serve as a start :

Criticality Level A

In the event of Criticality Level A, the entire plant will be shut down, along with multiple production lines, due to safety and environmental concerns. This may affect equipment that spans across multiple zones or areas. This includes equipment that is considered highly profitable, has high customer service needs, or experiences high volume demands. Additionally, equipment with high repair costs upon failure will fall under this criticality level.

Criticality Level B

Criticality B pertains to equipment with slightly reduced capacity that can be economically bypassed for a temporary period. This designation is often assigned to components along a single line. When equipment is classified as Criticality B, it signifies that it may not be functioning at maximum capacity, but can still operate effectively with a cost-efficient solution in place. This classification aids in prioritizing maintenance and repair tasks based on the criticality of the equipment.

Criticality Level C

Items classified under Criticality C are essential for comfort in a building. This category includes HVAC systems and air make-up units, which play a crucial role in maintaining a comfortable environment for occupants. Malfunctioning HVAC systems can lead to discomfort and reduced productivity among building occupants. It is imperative to regularly maintain and service these comfort items to avoid any disruptions to building operations.

Criticality Level D

Items classified under Criticality D, signifying that it holds no significance due to redundancy or its lack of direct involvement in the process. This indicates that the item is nonessential to the operation and can be viewed as inconsequential in relation to the overall process.

Why Must Assets be Treated Differently Based on Criticality?

In order to wisely allocate your resources, it is imperative to prioritize the more vital assets. Below are the guidelines for distinguishing and favoring the most crucial assets:

Maintenance Scheduling

Prioritizing maintenance tasks is essential for ensuring the reliability and performance of critical assets. Promptly carrying out maintenance on key assets helps prevent potential issues and costly breakdowns. By focusing on critical assets, companies can maintain optimal performance and avoid downtime.

Asset Replacement

In line with the principle of asset replacement, critical assets should be allocated additional funding for new parts or replacements. It is essential for critical assets to operate at peak performance, resembling new, to ensure optimal functionality. Prioritizing funding for critical assets in this manner can aid in sustaining efficiency and effectiveness within operations.

Life-Cycle Costing

Life-cycle costing is the process of monitoring the total cost of owning an asset for its entire lifespan. This method offers a thorough insight into the actual cost of the asset, taking into account not only the initial purchase price but also the expenses related to its maintenance over time. By evaluating the life-cycle cost, organizations can make well-informed choices regarding asset management and budgeting, guaranteeing precise tracking of all asset-related expenditures.

Failure Analysis

Understanding the reasons for asset failure and how to prevent it in the future is crucial for businesses. It is essential to use failure analysis techniques selectively, as they can be expensive and time-consuming. By examining failed assets, businesses can identify weaknesses and implement necessary improvements to avoid future failures, ultimately ensuring the reliability and longevity of assets.

How Does Nirmalya Suite Help Enterprises Streamline O & M?

Nirmalya Suite's Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) plays a crucial role in helping enterprises streamline Operations and Maintenance (O&M) processes efficiently. By utilizing the features of Nirmalya Suite, organizations can prioritize maintenance work based on the criticality of industrial equipment or machinery. The suite offers various tools such as numeric fields for assets with health, safety, or environmental impacts, and user-definable priority fields that enhance flexibility in managing maintenance tasks. Additionally, Nirmalya EAM can evaluate the likelihood of failure and relative risk, allowing businesses to proactively schedule maintenance activities. By identifying critical assets from non-critical ones, enterprises can concentrate their resources and efforts on ensuring the optimal performance of the most vital assets. This strategic approach not only improves operational efficiency but also reduces downtime and risks, ultimately leading to a smoother and more streamlined O&M process.

Nirmalya Suite's EAM, incorporating Artificial Intelligence and Business Intelligence, offers unmatched flexibility in setting up preventive maintenance protocols with customizable checklists. By utilizing AI-enabled prescriptive maintenance, the system can help conduct thorough initial asset investigations, resulting in the quick creation of tickets to address any identified issues. These actions are based on input data from operators or gathered through SCADA and IoT devices. The Nirmalya Dashboard and Analytics are crucial tools for businesses, enabling effective asset management strategies that optimize machinery uptime and increase profitability. This comprehensive approach not only streamlines asset maintenance operations but also improves overall operational efficiency, in line with industry best practices to support continuous business growth. To learn how Nirmalya Suite can benefit enterprises like yours, please contact us today!