Dairy processing site performance improvement using reliability centered maintenance

The dairy industry in New Zealand has typically adopted a conservative, calendar based approach to the maintenance of critical plant and this has resulted in the perception of excessive costs and maintenance burdens being levied on businesses. Recent innovation within the industry has led to the consideration of structured reliability centered maintenance techniques to improve maintenance and site performance. This paper presents the application of reliability centered maintenance to high speed, centrifugal dairy separation equipment at two New Zealand dairy sites. A pragmatic, practical approach is demonstrated, and the methodology employed in improving the equipment maintenance is fully described. The paper discusses the limitations of the previous maintenance strategy, and how the reliability centred approach reconciles these limitations in determining new, optimum maintenance activities. The importance of having meaningful, complete data in such an analysis procedure is discussed and the various data sources used in the analysis are presented. The role of the many stakeholders in the optimisation process is also reviewed and it is concluded that the success of the process depends largely on the input, belief and commitment of those stakeholders. The paper concludes that the reliability centered maintenance process presented resulted in an optimised maintenance regime for the separation and clarification equipment under consideration, and that significant benefits are available through such a structured review and determination of optimised maintenance activities.