The Production Asset Lifecycle of the New MESA Smart Manufacturing Model

Authored by John Clemons, MESA Marketing Committee Chair

25 years ago, MESA International created the original MES Model. It’s gone through multiple reincarnations over the years but is still in use in every corner of the world, helping people define MES and MES projects.

Today, MESA International is undertaking one of its largest projects since the original MES Model. MESA International is developing a new Smart Manufacturing Model that will not only be descriptive in explaining what Smart Manufacturing is about, but will be prescriptive by providing specific recommendations on how people can be smart in their manufacturing endeavors.

The new Smart Manufacturing Model will be divided into chapters defining specific lifecycles within the manufacturing environment. One of the chapters will be on the lifecycle of production assets and how individuals can be smart about managing their production assets. Because these chapters are prescriptive, and not merely descriptive, the new Smart Manufacturing Model will be invaluable to Smart Manufacturing practitioners.

The following paragraphs provide an overview of the prescriptive nature of the production asset lifecycle management chapter of the new MESA International Smart Manufacturing Model.

1. Production assets fail unexpectedly. Many failures seem random, but most failures are not random and can be avoided. It’s important to understand what causes unexpected failures and the Smart Manufacturing Model will help us learn how to be smart in avoiding assets that fail unexpectedly.
2. Everyone wants to run their production assets as optimally as possible. But that’s easier said than done and most companies never run their production assets optimally. It’s important to understand what it takes to run production assets in an optimal fashion and the Smart Manufacturing Model will help us learn how we can be smart in making a production asset run optimally.
3. When failures occur it’s important to understand the root cause of the failures. It’s often not what you thought it was. It usually takes a deeper dive into what happened to truly understand the root cause of the failure. It’s important to understand the root causes of failures and the Smart Manufacturing Model will help us understand how to identify the root causes of failures in a smart way.
4. Maintenance is a normal part of the production asset lifecycle but, maintenance that is not synchronized with production just doesn’t add much value. In other words, it’s important to understand how maintenance can drive productivity and remove non-value-added activity. The Smart Manufacturing Model will help us by providing prescriptive actions to achieve this.
5. Likewise, under-maintenance and over-maintenance are also common in the lifecycle of production assets. While everyone wants to minimize under-maintenance and over-maintenance, it can be very difficult to distinguish over, under, and just right. It’s important to understand the causes for under-maintenance and over-maintenance and the Smart Manufacturing Model will help us be smart in avoiding under-maintenance and over-maintenance.
6. Spare parts are an important aspect of the production asset lifecycle. But it can be costly to have spare parts that aren’t needed and even more costly to not have spare parts that are needed. It’s important to understand what spare parts are needed and not needed and the Smart Manufacturing Model will help us to be smart in ordering spare parts.
7. Sometimes production assets might have design flaws that cause rejects during field operation. The Smart Manufacturing Model will prescribe smart actions for leveraging field data for removing design flaws or making design improvements in a production asset.
8. At some point, all production assets must be retired. But it’s costly to retire an asset too early and maybe even more costly to retire an asset too late. It’s important to understand when a production asset should be retired, and the Smart Manufacturing Model will help us to be smart in retiring a production asset at just the right time that will maximize the asset’s economic value.

This is what’s going to be just one chapter of the new MESA International Smart Manufacturing Model. This chapter is on production assets and there are chapters on all other key aspects of the manufacturing operations. The chapters aren’t academic and they’re not merely descriptive. They are practical and prescriptive, dealing with real world situations and how we can be smart in dealing with those situations.

Stay tuned for more looks into chapters of the new MESA International Smart Manufacturing Model.

Enhance your exposure by sponsoring the MESA Smart Manufacturing Model.