Viewpoint: It’s All About Power – Strategies And Goals

Dieter Brunner, Managing Director, Industrial Systems American Power Conversion Corporation

The business challenges in manufacturing these days are very different from the past. Today, facilities are competing with countless others around the globe. Competition, though, also opens up a number of growth opportunities. But, to fully participate in those opportunities, companies will need to increase productivity, reduce costs and speed up cycle time-while maintaining high levels of quality.

This need to improve efficiencies and maximize availability also requires the ensuring of increased safety and security levels.Moreover, at the same time the market is seeking the flexibility to act on new and changing demands, it often is having to deal with new governmental rules and regulations.

When it comes to coping with these many challenges, the specific strategies you choose to follow are crucial to your success. Some of these specific strategies (and the tactics to implement them) involve the individuals in charge of maintenance at a facility. One of the most important decisions maintenance faces today concerns production shutdowns.

The days of shutting down production lines to perform regular maintenance are over. For whatever reasons, be they downsizing, cost concerns or others, in many facilities the typical approach has become one of repairing equipment after it breaks down. Such an approach, however, does not allow a facility to maximize its capacity.

Maintenance departments must truly get their arms around effective predictive maintenance. This requires continuously collecting and analyzing historical data, quality data, safety data, etc. and the introduction of state-of-the-art predictive maintenance tools.With better information and tools, it is far easier to find opportunities for improvement and reduce Mean Time To Repair. Another important strategy involves more automation in the production process, and the getting away from disparate networks. Seamless corporate networks pave the way to increased efficiency– and enable maintenance to implement the best predictive maintenance strategies.

But, let’s imagine what would happen if, after choosing and implementing these and other strategies to enhance your uptime and productivity, that your facility suddenly found itself without power. . .

As more and more plants move to automated control of their processes, they are introducing more digital equipment in their facilities. This has dramatically increased the need for a stable, secure and high-quality power supply that ensures production and business continuity. Thus, the strategies a company adopts in regard to power availability are more critical than ever before. As a global leader in power availability solutions, our company clearly recognizes that downtime is not an option. Therefore, we are always challenging “the status quo” and striving for new ways to meet your needs.

To do this,we constantly are looking at the challenges facing the market (both existing and emerging challenges).We also are listening carefully to our customers’ comments and concerns, including how they view their future business challenges. The answer (and, with it, the future) clearly calls for facilities to be able to obtain uninterruptible power system solutions, 24/7.

In a world that demands zero downtime, we view our primary goal as one of providing you with these types of cost-effective system solutions—and real peace of mind. That, in turn,will allow you and your facility to fully concentrate on the type of business strategies that lead to your goals: continued growth and success. MT