M A I N T E N A N C E
Machinery & Equipment MRO
December 2021
THE FUTURE OF MAINTENANCE
It’s been a year where various regulations and restrictions are in place since a global pandemic took hold in early 2020. Many processes around the world have changed to adapt, including maintenance practices. In turn, now is a good time to look at how maintenance has evolved and where it’s heading. BY MARYAM FARAG
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here is no doubt that the future of maintenance will include digitization and automation. The expanded deployment of digital technologies across manufacturing plants, facilities, utilities, and other organizations is set to reduce labourious
tasks, optimize maintenance schedules, increase preparedness and productivity, create safer environments for workers and improve the bottom lines of industrial organizations. MRO enlisted a select group of maintenance experts – whose expertise in-
cludes asset management, maintenance consulting and training, supply chain management, and CMMS software – to help us build a snapshot of the future of the maintenance industry.
Asset Management
First, we spoke to Leonard G Middleton, Consultant at Asset Management Solutions, who believe that the one consistency we can expect is change. “The rate of change will continue to accelerate, and organizations will need to be resilient, agile, and learning continuously, if they are to successfully ride the wave of these changes. “With the increased automation and digitization, our capability to measure assets, processes and even people performing tasks continues to accelerate. However, our ability to assimilate this tsunami of data remains limited. Improved tools will be required to convert this often-incoherent stream of data
Photo: metamorworks / Adobe Stock
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