Criticality Analysis Part 2: The Criticality Dilemma – So Many Assets, So Little Time

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Criticality Analysis Part 1: Why Criticality Analysis Is the First Step Toward Maintenance Maturity

Criticality Analysis Part 2: The Criticality Dilemma – So Many Assets, So Little Time

Criticality Analysis Part 3: Beyond “Critical” – A Better Way to Classify Your Assets

Criticality Analysis Part 4: What Maintenance Teams Can Learn From Healthcare Triage

Criticality Analysis Part 5: Tiered Maintenance – Matching Tools and Talent to Asset Risk

Criticality Analysis Part 6 : From Screening to Correction – The Complete Predictive Maintenance Workflow

In Part 1 of this series, we looked at criticality analysis—the foundational step to identifying which assets matter most. But what happens when your analysis shows that many assets are critical, and your team doesn’t have the time or resources to cover everything?

Welcome to the criticality dilemma.

If you conduct a criticality analysis, you’ll probably end up with a long list, and many things on that list are going to be critical.

Do you maintain what you can, or hope for more resources?

Performing a criticality analysis is fairly easy, and most companies have already done this to one degree or another, with varying success. The million-dollar difference lies in how people actually USE their criticality analyses.

Managers often make the mistake of taking an overly simplistic view of their criticality analysis, and they see only four options for maintaining their collection of assets.

Binary

Some people take a binary approach. They look at their long list of assets and decide where the hard line is drawn between assets that matter and assets that don’t. They create one cutoff line: Everything above the line is critical, and everything below the line is non-critical.

“If it isn’t a critical asset, don’t bother me about it.”

This is a self-defeating practice because even assets below the line need some attention, and even assets below the line — if neglected — can create problems that eventually become critical. This approach improperly uses the criticality analysis to justify ignoring or under maintaining many assets. This always feels liberating at first, but eventually comes back to haunt maintenance leaders and teams. The so-called “less-critical” assets keep having emergencies that force the maintenance team back into reactive mode.

Dynamic

Other people take a dynamic approach. They force-rank every asset into a list where each asset is more critical than the one below it. They start at the top of the list and get as far down as they can in a given period.

“If I have time for 20 assets, I do the first 20, if I have time for 100 assets, I do the first 100.”

This force-rank causes a falsely perfect order because it often requires a lot of false precision and apples-to-oranges comparisons of dissimilar assets. It also places too much emphasis on the precise mechanics of the scoring criteria. It makes the scoring system work too hard.

Once they work their way down the list, they can only maintain the number of assets based on their available resources. Some months are good; some months are bad. This dynamic approach may feel more flexible, but it is also a self-defeating practice because it still ignores most of what falls below the line.

Every Asset on Its Own Schedule

The majority of people use a variation of the dynamic approach. They set-up a maintenance schedule that allows them to maintain important assets more frequently and less important assets less frequently.

“I can maintain every asset on earth, as long as I can schedule it out far enough.”

This is the most common approach because it feels like the best of all worlds. They can work their way to the bottom of the criticality list (eventually), and they don’t need to increase resources. Again, this approach is self-defeating.

A subtle point must be made: Good maintenance scheduling is the cornerstone of any top-performing maintenance program. The trap that people fall into is that they confuse scheduled maintenance with sufficient maintenance. They think that simply having maintenance on a schedule equals effective maintenance. They respond to time constraints by simply thinning-out the schedule to push things out further, or they simply let every task go overdue.

Full Coverage

A few people take a full-coverage approach. They may conclude that most of their equipment is critical. Therefore they scale up their resources, so they have full coverage on all critical assets. They double the maintenance staff, send everyone to full cross-training and certification, and buy all new tools. Even worse, they may choose to keep their existing staff working perpetual overtime. This approach is also self-defeating for a few reasons.

First, this is the most expensive approach and in some cases you are trading high immediate costs for gradual, long-term cost savings.

Second, because of the high cost, this approach draws attention and scrutiny from upper management, which creates extreme pressure to deliver an immediate return on investment. If any machines fail, some may say it is proof that the program isn’t solving the problem. It breeds managerial impatience for immediate short-term results.

Finally, this approach is self-defeating because it implies that better maintenance is outside of our power. It suggests that improvement is determined entirely by our circumstances and resources.

So What’s the Better Way?

None of these four ways is sustainable. So what is the better way?

That’s where we’re headed in Part 3.

Author Bio: John Bernet is a Mechanical Application and Product Specialist at Fluke Corporation. Using his 30-plus years of experience in maintenance and operation of nuclear power plants and machinery in commercial plants, John has worked with customers in all industries implementing reliability programs. He is a Certified Category II Vibration Analyst and a Certified Maintenance Reliability Professional (CMRP), with over 20 years of experience diagnosing machine faults.