A Case Study Regarding Asset Management at a Bakery Processing Industry and the Challenges Presented for the Maintenance of Its Industrial Equipment

The strict normative and regulatory requirements to which the food industry is subject, present challenges to its assets management. For these companies, proper maintenance management and organization of their industrial equipment is essential. It is important to guarantee the necessary safety and security conditions, supported in detailed and updated information regarding assets, aiming to manage its life cycle, namely the operation phase. The preceding permits to increase the competitiveness, because the production is directly related to the equipment’s Availability. In this context, this paper presents activities carried out at a bakery company at Portugal, with the main objective of introducing an asset management policy supported by preventive maintenance and continuous improvement of processes, such as issuing work orders and managing of spare parts, through a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS), thus increasing the productivity of tasks inherent to the team. In the preparation of the preventive maintenance plan, the well-known and most common failures in the equipment, the criticality of the assets as well as the knowledge of maintenance technicians who worked with this equipment from the beginning of its life cycle were considered, based on the historical information available in the system. Connecting these plans with a perspective of continuous improvement growing within the organization, it was possible to set goals and strategically plan the management of these assets, focusing on maximizing their availability, adjusting tasks and periodicity preventing possible breakdowns.