In heavy industry’s slippery terrain, smooth running of Maintenance, Repair and Operations—or MRO—is the key for keeping productivity up and making sure machinery lasts long. But the road to get this kind of smooth-sailing isn’t easy—it’s filled with different tough spots that push how tough and flexible companies in these areas have become. The common MRO challenges they face are parts getting outdated, issues in the supply chain and not having enough workers with the right skills. All these issues—even though, different from each other, come together as a puzzle that needs some clever thinking and jumping on problems early if they want to fix it up.
In this blog we dive into the common MRO challenges faced by heavy industries when they do maintenance, repair and operations work. Let’s look closely at every difficulty and search for smart ways to make companies resilient and run better. By fully understanding these troubles and using specific plans, heavy industries can handle unexpected situations well, become resistant, and be better at dealing with today’s complicated industry world.
Table of Contents
Challenge #1: Parts Obsolescence – Proactive Solutions for Outdated Components
In the ever changing world of heavy industries, technology keeps marching on fast making tools and extra pieces get old quickly which is a constant problem when you want to keep fixing and using machinery right. This issue where parts get outdated keeps coming back, to mess with how machines work without stopping, putting a lot of stress on getting things done well, making money and keeping things cheap.
Source: IBM
Typical plant maintenance departments operate at an 18% to 74% wrench time rate. Most hover around 20% to 30% efficiency. This means a plant enjoying 74% wrench time might spend $100 million a year versus an unpalatable $400 million that a site with poor efficiency has to pay. (Source: Forbes)
Source: Pluto-men
Solutions:
a) Proactive Monitoring: Anticipate and Prevent Parts Obsolescence
Setting up and keeping a strong system for watching things before problems show up is crucial when you’re dealing with the complex problem of parts not being used any more. By detailed follow-up on machinery and extra parts life stages, companies can get ahead of their important pieces going out of date. This approach makes it possible to spot the pieces that might soon be old. This lets the management come up with plans for switching these parts or making them better so they avoid mess-ups in how stuff gets done.
Source: brightlysoftware
The P-F curve, or Prevention – Failure curve, is a graph used to identify asset reliability and performance over time. It plots the interval between an asset’s potential failure (P) and functional failure (F), which allows you to identify when preventive maintenance measures should be taken.
As an asset accumulates operating hours, its expected failure rate increases. The P-F curve maintenance technique offers a way for you to see the health of equipment over time. It’s an essential tool in developing effective maintenance strategies, as it can be used to predict the optimal balance between planned and corrective maintenance procedures.
b) Collaboration with Suppliers: Mitigating Obsolescence Risks
Building strong, cooperative relationships with suppliers is becoming a crucial tactic for dealing with the issue of parts no longer being made. Heavy industries benefit loads from creating good communication and close partnership ties with their suppliers, this allows companies to learn about the new tech and upcoming product changes ahead of time. Such two-way relations gives businesses the power they need to see obsolescence coming and take steps early on to find different parts or make upgrades making sure that maintenance, repair operations keep going without any hitches.
c) Reverse Engineering: When Replacement Parts Aren’t Available
When businesses use these ways they can fill in holes left by old parts, they do this carefully by making them again or fixing up those bits and pieces. This plan doesn’t just help make machines last longer but also opens doors to new kinds of fixes after things are sold which helps lessen the dangers that come when parts aren’t made any more.
d) Stockpile Critical Parts: Ensuring Availability When Needed
Careful pinpointing and strategic storing of important pieces that is likely to become outdated is a smart move for heavy industry. When companies spot crucial bits early on and stack them up they guard against the mess obsolescence causes when fixing stuff. This timely step makes sure there’s always spare parts around it and also acts like a strong wall stopping any break time and keeping things running smoothly even as the technology keeps changing.
Challenge #2: Mitigating Supply Chain Disruptions in Heavy Industry MRO
Many heavy industries face big problems with their maintenance, repair and operations because they get disrupted in supply chains. These disruptions could happen for different reasons, maybe natural disasters like big earthquakes or very strong hurricanes, political tensions that lead to restrictions on trade, even things like ports closing down or transportation getting stuck can cause trouble.
No matter why it happens when there’s a disruption in the supply chain, the effects can be really bad. Industries often have to wait a long time if they need certain parts and materials for fixing their equipment. Since industries need a constant flow of parts so everything works without any issues, anything that interrupts this flow can make production take longer, downtime goes up and at the end they could lose lots of money.
Source: Visual Capitalist
In 2021, th͏e Suez Canal ͏experienced a historic disruption when e͏normous container ve͏ssel got stu͏ck. The event caused noticeable economic effec͏t, with approximately $9.6 billi͏on worth of trade stopped daily. Measures to͏ remove ships include͏d dredging and ͏tugboat, showing intricate logistic͏s in addressing such a crisis.
Approximately 12% of worldwide trade flows throug͏h the canal daily. The obs͏truction resulted in a buildup of hundreds of sh͏ips wait͏i͏ng to pass ͏throu͏g͏h, leadin͏g to d͏elivery delays and worries about shortages of essential͏ goods. ͏This event underscored how sup͏ply͏ ch͏ains are vulnerable to sudden disturbances and emphasised the im͏portance of having backup ͏plans and diversifi͏c͏ation strate͏gies to͏ reduce th͏ese risks ͏going forward.
Solutions:
a) Diversification: Reducing Supply Chain Vulnerability
Heavy industry can take on the difficulties that come from supply chain troubles by putting in place different smart methods to become more tough and lessen dangers. These strategies include things like spreading out who you buy stuff from, making plans for being resilient when problems happen, getting along well with important sellers and using digital technology a lot.
Heavy industry should lessen their chance of making losses due to problems in the supply chain through spreading out who they use for supplies. Companies shouldn’t put all their eggs in one basket with a single supplier but rather work with different suppliers from various places or countries. By this way, companies are able to share out the risk that comes when there’s trouble in one area and make sure their supply chain stays more firm and bounce back better.
b) Resilience Planning: Preparing for Supply Chain Disruptions
It’s really important for managing the supply chain that robust backup plans are made. This includes doing detailed risk assessments to find out where the weak spots might be in your supply chain and put things in place to lessen these dangers. Firms could create different routes for transporting goods, stockpile extra supplies as a safety net and choose production strategies that can change quickly when situations shift.
c) Collaborative Relationships: Strengthening Your Supply Chain Network
Working together with important suppliers to make strong alliances is really necessary for getting better at handling problems in the supply chain. When companies talk and work together openly with their suppliers, both can get ready before troubles happen and come up with good ways to deal with them. Plus these kinds of teamwork connections help everyone share what they know and their resources, making it easier for all involved to take on issues well and keep their business running smoothly.
d) Digitalization: Optimizing Supply Chain Visibility and Control
Digitalisation means adopting digital techs like blockchain, Internet of Things and high-level analytics to increase the supply chain clarity and tracking. This tech helps monitor inventory amounts, transport paths and how things are made in real-time so businesses can find and fix problems fast. When heavy industry uses digitalisation, they get better at dealing with issues in the supply chain which makes them work smoother and cuts down chances for stopped work.
Challenge #3: Combatting the Skilled Labor Shortage – Strategies for Heavy Industry
Skilled labor shortage in heavy industries are complex and come from deep issues. Main reasons include demographics changing in the workforce as lots of skilled people get close to retiring age. This problem, mixed with fast changes in technology and how industry works means there’s a bigger difference between what skills are needed for up-to-date maintenance, fixing and overhauling jobs and the workers who can do them. So this means that heavy industries have a tough time finding and keeping people who are able to handle all the complicated stuff that comes with these MRO jobs.
Solutions:
a) Training and Development: Upskilling Your MRO Workforce
Heavy industries must focus on putting money into solid training and development programs for stopping skill shortages before they happen. These programs need to fit the exact needs of MRO jobs including both the hard skills and easier ones like figuring things out and talking well. By giving workers training to get better at what they do and move up in their careers, companies can grow an excellent group of workers that’s ready for whatever new challenge the industry throws at them.
Source: Microsoft
b) Knowledge Transfer: Preserving and Sharing Expertise
It’s important for taking the deep knowledge and skills from workers who’ve been around a while so one can handle not having enough workers. When you set up official mentor programs it helps pass on that good knowledge and advice from the old worker to the new ones. With mentors, those just starting out get their hands on real smart tricks, how-to’s and things people have learned before, which makes them get better faster at maintaining, fixing and overhauling stuff. Plus, making everyone work together and share what they know makes everyone feel connected and builds up the whole company strong.
c) Collaboration with Educational Institutions: Building a Pipeline of Skilled Workers
Heavy industries need to team up with schools to fix the lack of skilled workers problem in the future. When they work together with trade schools and colleges they can make education programs that match what companies need. This teamwork makes sure students learn the right things for Maintenance, Repair and Operations jobs so that when they graduate they are ready for work because employers want those skills. Also, giving out internships, apprenticeships or cooperative education spots helps kids get real experience which fills the space between book learning and doing things for real.
d) Remote Monitoring and Diagnostics: Leveraging Technology to Offset Skill Gaps
Embrace technology innovations like remote monitoring and predictive maintenance solutions as a plan for lessening the effects of not enough skilled workers on MRO tasks. These fancy technologies use data analysis, sensor networks and smart computer programs to allow keeping an eye on machines’ health and how they work at all times. By spotting problems soon and knowing when machines need care, businesses can make the best use of their resources, cut down on unexpected breaks in work, and make important equipment last longer. Plus remote diagnostic tools give people working on-location the power to get help and advice from far away which makes them better at their jobs and improves how well everything runs overall.
Click here to learn in detail about building a high performace MRO workforce
To sum up, in order to tackle the problems caused by not enough skilled workers in big industries we need to include putting money into training and learning, passing on know-how, working together with schools and using new tech. If firms put these tactics into play, they can create a workforce that’s tough enough to handle the strenuous MRO jobs and keep being competitive for a long time.
In heavy industry, people often stumble over the maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) which throws a wrench into how things run smoothly. Handling the MRO difficulties in big industries needs forward-thinking and a complex plan. By taking care of problems linked with old parts, building a tough supply network and filling shortage of skilled workers following the strategies described earlier, heavy industries can improve how well they work, reduce time when machines aren’t running and keep up in a constantly changing field.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Worldref’s views, opinions or policies.
Fo͏r͏ those interested with th͏e strategies outline͏d in ͏the b͏log to overcome comm͏on MRO challenges, worldref.co provides compreh͏ensive platform for further exploration and implementation.
Dive deeper into intricacies of mai͏ntenance, rep͏air, and ͏operati͏ons ͏by disc͏overing additional͏ insigh͏ts and solutions͏ off͏ered on wo͏rlderf.co.
Ex͏p͏l͏ore cutting-edge technologies, b͏est͏ practices, and case studies t͏o optimize͏ your ͏operations and drive success in ͏t͏o͏day’s dynamic industry landscape.
This is a great article addressing some of the biggest hurdles we face in our heavy equipment MRO operations. The solutions for parts obsolescence are particularly helpful – we’ve definitely been caught out by outdated components a few times.
I’d be curious to know if the author has any specific recommendations for software or digital platforms to assist with proactive monitoring and inventory tracking. Those seem like key areas where we could improve.
Overall, very informative – thanks for sharing!