Sustainability in industries has been focusing on new things, buildings, equipment, and technologies. However, over recent years, the focus has extended to how businesses use and maintain their assets to achieve sustainability. There are numerous environmentally friendly practices organizations can apply to maintenance processes. However, sustainability is more than that. It also encompasses lowering maintenance and operational costs, reducing the social impact of your operations, and eliminating uneconomical practices. Let us take a close look at sustainable maintenance and how it is helping organizations achieve sustainability and contribute to the green economy.
A Definition of Sustainable Maintenance
Maintenance in organizations involves keeping equipment and assets in good working condition and extending their lifespan. That means using energy and materials that may harm the environment. That is why sustainable maintenance comes in. You need to look at the effectiveness of care to prolong the life of your assets. That means considering the environment and how various maintenance activities impact the environment. If you have equipment like a generator, creating a generator maintenance checklist helps you understand the frequency of the maintenance cycle and how specific tasks repeat themselves. So, evaluate the impact of the activities in terms of the waste it creates and the energy used. Once you know how maintenance activities impact the life cycle of your assets and the environment, it will be easy to come up with other alternatives or improve the current processes.
The Important of Sustainable Maintenance
Sustainable maintenance reduces the impact maintenance activities have on the environment. It also improves efficiency to enhance the performance of your organization both economically and environmentally.
It also helps improve air quality and reduce waste and emissions in your facility. This helps prolong the lifespan of our assets and reduce energy usage. For example, preventive maintenance reduces raw materials’ use and emissions by more than 30%. Therefore, with sustainable preventive maintenance, it becomes easy for asset lifecycle management.
Sustainable maintenance also comes with economic benefits. For instance, it improves compliance and asset utilization. It also prevents unexpected and unnecessary care and reduces costs linked to breakdowns and fines due to non-compliance.
Implementing Sustainable Maintenance
You can achieve sustainable preventive maintenance by making simple changes in your organization. Start with the following steps:
- Preventing unnecessary Use
One way to implement sustainable maintenance is by reducing equipment usage to prevent unnecessary maintenance. That means using equipment within its designed capability and frequently performing maintenance to minimize environmental impact and future frequencies of maintenance.
- Conserving Limited Resources
You can find alternatives to limited resources. For example, increasing maintenance frequency reduces the energy you would otherwise need for a single task. You can also utilize fewer materials and energy equipment without significant environmental impact.
- Using Reusable Resources
It is also a good idea to utilize renewable resources for maintenance tasks. For example, you can look for renewable sources of electricity or use human power instead of a machine for specific activities.
How CMMS Software Can Help in Sustainable Maintenance
The best and most efficient way to achieve sustainable maintenance is by using CMMS. CMMS is software that helps track, organize and monitor maintenance processes and track what is working and areas that require improvement. It also makes operations smooth and allows your organization contributes to the green economy.
Optimizing preventive maintenance with CMMS allows you to keep your equipment in peak condition and lower operational costs. It also comes with proper spare parts management to reduce the number you need to be supplied to your organization. This saves money and helps your organization become greener by using less energy and saving money.
Wrapping Up
Sustainable maintenance is critical in facilities since it enables businesses to improve equipment performance while protecting the environment. So, consider the environmental implications of maintenance activities and look for better and more sustainable alternatives. Using technology like CMMS software can also help become more sustainable.