Secure Your Organization's Future: Prioritize Maintenance Today
The chemical industry navigates a highly complex landscape where safety, compliance, and asset performance are paramount. In this setting, effective maintenance transcends merely keeping machinery operational; it is essential for driving value, ensuring safety, and meeting performance targets—all while effectively managing costs.
This is where Value-Based Maintenance (VBM) becomes crucial. This strategic approach optimizes the balance between cost, risk, and performance to enhance the value derived from maintenance activities. By aligning maintenance efforts with broader business goals—such as boosting reliability, adhering to regulatory requirements, or promoting sustainability—VBM enables chemical companies to revolutionize their maintenance strategies.
We have a track record of improving maintenance functions to deliver value to your business
Our approach has consistently delivered impressive results for our clients
8-30%
increase in
Overall Equipment Effectiveness
8-15%
decrease of
Maintenance Spend Reduction
30-47%
Reduction of
technical Production Losses
15-20%
increase in
Maintenance productivity
Why you should consider Value-Based Maintenance
Key trends
In the chemical sector, where adherence to regulations and safety standards is crucial, Value-Based Maintenance (VBM) enables proactive risk management before issues escalate.
Furthermore, in today's dynamic market landscape, characterized by intensifying regulatory demands and global competition, chemical organizations can no longer afford inefficient maintenance practices. The cost of downtime extends beyond immediate production losses, impacting a company's ability to innovate and grow in the long term.
The five most common maintenance characteristics in chemicals
Mix of in- and outsourced maintenance function
Seeking the right balance between outsourcing appropriate maintenance activities to a specialized external partner network and maintaining independence and autonomy on critical maintenance activities. Establishing an on-par level of cooperation between Maintenance and Production due to the importance of assets.
Regulatory Compliance
The role of Maintenance (engineering and execution) is crucial to retain License to Operate by fulfilling increasing regulatory requirements in the areas of health, safety, technical integrity, non-technical risks and environment.
The need for high efficiency and plan attainment
In a process environment, lack of planning severely impacts maintenance efficiency. This is due to several factors:
- The need to make assets chemical-free before maintenance
- Implementation of safety measures (such as Lock-out/Tag-out/Try-out or LoToTo)
- Preparation of required spare parts
As a result, on average, an unplanned intervention costs 2.5 times more than a planned maintenance activity
Balance between the day-2-day execution and reliability focus
High asset reliability is crucial for profitability in the chemical industry. Due to the complexity of processes and asset structures, there's a need to proactively focus on reliability. This involves:
- Conducting criticality assessments
- Developing differentiated asset strategies
It's essential to allocate dedicated resources for these activities to maintain a functioning reliability 'engine'. This approach helps prevent these important tasks from being overshadowed by day-to-day maintenance needs.
Experienced workforce
Given the complexity and criticality of assets in the chemical industry, there is a need for a highly specialized workforce. Skill requirements are expected to increase and will also include digital and automation competencies. At the same time, the industry faces difficulties in compensating for demographic knowledge drain and attracting the right talents.
We help you tackle the complex chemicals challenges in CapEx optimization
Demographic
Implementing effective gate keeping and targeted engagement management ensures proper project oversight and stakeholder involvement.
- How can we mitigate the ongoing knowledge loss in the next 2-3 years due to demographic change?
- How can we set up a future-proof organization with the right skills and ensure an attractive work environment?
- How can we secure existing know-how and make it available for new resources?
EFESO’s service: Organizational effectiveness & skill gap closure
Our proven Schumacher organization development process ensures a business-driven and future-proof organization by aligning structure with strategy and enhancing operational efficiency.
Continued cost pressure
Chemical organizations face ongoing challenges to minimize maintenance costs while ensuring optimal asset performance. A key hurdle is streamlining interactions between production and maintenance to enhance efficiency. This requires a strategic approach that balances cost-effectiveness with high reliability standards, enabling companies to reduce expenses while preserving asset integrity.
- How can we ensure smooth core processes and interfaces between production and maintenance (e.g., work order management) to optimize spending?
- How can we set up a performance management system capable of steering collaboration and efficient resource utilization?
- How can we make practical use of digital tools to simplify work?
EFESO’s service: Execution Excellence in Maintenance
Our World Class Maintenance Pyramid enables an objective assessment of maturity levels and identifies priority areas for further development of maintenance processes.
Increased reliability
Ensuring high asset reliability is critical to profitability in the chemical industry. There is a challenge in allocating resources and focusing on reliability management activities, such as criticality assessments and differentiated asset strategies. These activities are essential to avoid being consumed by day-to-day maintenance needs.
- How can we protect reliability and mechanical integrity-focused activities from being consumed by day-to-day maintenance?
- How can we pragmatically drive criticality assessments and differentiated asset strategies?
- How can we effectively use digital aids and cross-functional know-how of our people to sustainably boost asset reliability?
EFESO’s service: Asset reliability 4.0
Setting up effective reliability management requires a dual approach: delivering short-term reliability performance and applying data-driven, reliability-centered maintenance strategies using state-of-the-art technologies (e.g., IoT sensors, condition monitoring systems, digital twins, and big data analytics).
Pragmatic Reliability Management ensures, at all times, a balance between an asset's value-add/criticality and the effort invested in developing a differentiated asset strategy.
Changing shared
Chemical companies must adapt to changes in shared services while ensuring resilience in the maintenance function. This requires the creation of an organization that can efficiently handle outsourced activities and make practical use of digital tools to boost asset reliability.
- How can we effectively respond to changes in shared services functions?
- How can we set up efficient contractor management for outsourced activities?
- How can we ensure the resilience of the maintenance function in changing environments?
- How can we capture the benefits of collaborative efforts in adopting new technologies?
EFESO’s service: Strategic Make or Buy and Maintenance Operating Model
After making strategic Make-or-Buy decisions, it's crucial to establish an effective contractor management operating model for outsourced functions
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