Viewpoint: Notice Anything New?

Jane Alexander, Editor-In_Chief

Now that you’ve read through this month’s magazine, it’s fair to ask if you’ve noticed anything new on our cover and in our pages. You should have. That’s because we’ve made changes in some wording and visual elements to support a sharpening of our focus. With this issue of Maintenance Technology, we formally have become “your source for capacity assurance solutions.” We trust that you will find value in this move.

Capacity assurance is not a new term—it’s been around for many years. Those of you in the maintenance and reliability community are no doubt quite familiar with it, since it’s all about maximizing uptime, minimizing downtime, running safely, cleanly, efficiently and profitably.

The task of keeping modern plants running at peak capacity, however, goes well beyond the area of traditional maintenance and reliability (although those elements are more important than ever as key capacity assurance components). It encompasses all activities necessary for ensuring that your equipment and systems are capable of operating at prescribed output and quality levels whenever scheduled or needed. In other words, capacity assurance is the “fat rabbit” everyone in a company is chasing 24/7/365—and we do mean everyone. Therefore, being successful in this chase requires a “holistic,” integrated approach to maintenance, operations and management.

We at Maintenance Technology have long recognized how critical it is for you in industry to be able to catch the capacity assurance rabbit quickly—continuously. In fact, we’ve been championing the types of integrated approaches and solutions that help you get the job done for more than 20 years. Today, though, and into the future, with so much riding on a company’s ability to assure capacity, we feel compelled to be more specific in our own approach.

Time has marched on. Technologies, applications, operating parameters and business environments have changed. So have your jobs, your time constraints and your information needs. What has not changed is the importance of capacity assurance across your operations—and the fact that countless organizations are pushed to get more, more, more of it with less, less, less.

Putting our editorial spotlight on “capacity assurance” as opposed to “plant equipment reliability, maintenance and asset management” will allow us to better serve you and other busy readers. You’ve been seeing us move in that direction for some time, placing increased emphasis on failure avoidance and the operating equipment and systems where preventive and predictive maintenance technologies are applied than we have in the past. Our quarterly supplements, “Utilities Manager” (focusing on successful demand-side energy solutions for plants and facilities) and “The Fundamentals” (taking a back-to-basics approach to maintenance and reliability), are two other prime examples of our sharpened focus. Now, going forward, you can expect even more great “new” things from us.

You know it and we know it… Excellence in capacity assurance is vital to industrial profit and world-class quality. In our view, it’s one of the fattest rabbits out there. Maintenance Technology is proud to be your partner in this noble and exciting chase.