subject: A CMMS Will Increase Wastewater Facilities Efficiency [print this page] A CMMS Will Increase Wastewater Facilities Efficiency
Wastewater facilities generally operate under the radar for most communities unless of course you live downwind of one. However, the role of a wastewater treatment plant is changing as a result of an ever increasing demand for water as well as changing social awareness of water quality. This makes it imperative that water efficiency be improved for wastewater facilities management. Water efficiency is another way of saying that wastewater facilities need to maintain their infrastructure to minimize water losses and become more efficient in the production of usable water.
Every wastewater plant contains a myriad of myriad of equipment such to handle sludge, filter debris, contaminants, toxins as well as assets designed for storage, disposal and separation. Asset maintenance is even more difficult as the very nature of the wastewater process encourages accelerated corrosion due to due to methanogenesis and hydrogen sulphide. When combined with the economic crunch of today it is crucial that wastewater facilities make use of available Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) to organize and streamline maintenance operations.
Without the proper management tools, aging wastewater system maintenance can quickly get out of hand sliding quickly into a purely reactive maintenance and repair operation. A CMMS will help management regain control of the maintenance process by transforming manual and inefficient work order processing into a proactive wastewater maintenance operation. This is important for wastewater facilities because a good rule of thumb is that maintenance work orders should be 80% proactive and 20% reactive.
By eliminating paperflow and scheduling all MRO, maintenance teams will have more time to address preventive maintenance tasks such as inspections and minor repairs. Through the early identification of leaks, corrosion or potential asset failures wastewater facilities managers can greatly reduce the amount of contaminated water seeping into groundwater supplies as well as minimize unplanned maintenance and repairs. Identifying problems before they become major headaches can be done using the inspections and preventive maintenance features of a CMMS.
A CMMS based maintenance program will also increase the energy efficiency of assets by making sure they are properly maintained. Most wastewater treatment plants have equipment that handles sludge, aeration, scum removal and other filtration components, tanks and disposal equipment. Preventive maintenance enables these assets to operate as they were designed to operate. When an asset is not properly maintained they will require more energy to achieve the same results. Most importantly, well maintained assets last longer than unmaintained equipment thereby lowering the amount of capital dollars needed for replacement as well as the production costs of reclaimed water.
In order to accomplished the desired results, CMMS software creates a database of all assets in a wastewater plant. The CMMS database is composed of all asset information such as location, description, date of purchase, install date, costs, work request and work order history including who performed the work, how long it took and results of the work order. With proper implementation the information generated by the CMMS software will enable management to accurately identify assets with an increasing maintenance history so that inspections and/or preventive maintenance actions can be taken.
