The Fiixers have spoken! According to our recent poll, our sustainability group is keen to learn ways they can reduce the upfront costs associated with sustainability.

What is sustainability?

But let’s reframe the question. First, what is sustainability? It doesn’t always mean implementing expensive new roles and processes to control your environmental impact. Those initiatives are good and necessary, but I want to be explicit: sustainability is not the same thing as environmentalism.

Let’s take the case of Cimento Itambe, a global player in cement. By using predictive modelling to better understand their processes, Cimento Itambe has simultaneously increased production and made it leaner (that is, more sustainable):

• Increased kiln productivity by 3%
• Decreased energy use in kilns by 2%
• Increased mill productivity by 5 – 10%
• Decreased energy use in mills by 5%

This certainly contradicts the commonly-held belief that sustainability means spending more money. Instead, sustainability is doing more with less. And while these percentages may seem small, in a competitive world of razor-thin margins, KPI results like this can make all the difference.

Sustainability is doing more with less.

This definition makes sustainability more appealing to even the most business-oriented among us. In fact, it should make sustainability appealing especially to business-oriented leaders who have KPIs to hit and budgets to manage.

Becoming Sustainable

So how do we go about it? For us here at Fiix, the challenge to realizing this vision of sustainability lies in promoting the use of our great built-in analytics and predictive features. These are Fiix Analytics & Reporting, Fiix Foresight, and Fiix Asset Risk Predictor. While each tool has its unique features, they all have one thing in common: they provide a look into your maintenance data to help make better decisions.

Remember, the quickest way to become sustainable is to keep producing the results you’re already producing, but with less. This means finding and eliminating waste--something for which these tools do an excellent job. So, here are our three ways to save money and become more sustainable at the same time:

1. Catch asset problems while they’re small, cheap, and fixable. There’s an old saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This could well be the maintenance pro’s mantra. With tools like Asset Insights, you can easily see when assets are requiring more work orders than usual--a key sign that something is amiss. Fiix ARP works slightly differently, tapping into machine sensor data to detect the signs of oncoming failure in an even more direct fashion. Whichever method you choose, these tools will allow you to fix asset issues before they snowball into expensive line shutdowns and CapEx for replacements.
2. Optimize inventory levels of the parts you keep on hand. You want to strike a fine balance in the storeroom--too few parts on hand can lead to longer repair lead times and expensive downtime. Too many can cause crowding, inefficiencies, and of course, hit the budget harder up front. You can use Fiix Analytics and tools like Parts Forecaster to discover trends in your parts usage and optimize on-hand levels. Parts Forecaster makes life especially easy, because it will tell you exactly how many of a part you’re expected to consume next month, and the number you should order to hit that perfect quantity.
3. Consider adjusting the schedule of recurring PMs. Maybe you’re inspecting that motor once a week. This means labor hours that could possibly be better spent elsewhere--What if weekly is too much? Could you get away with biweekly and keep the same performance metrics? That’s where tools like Asset Insights (included in Fiix Foresight) and Fiix Asset Risk Predictor come in. By helping you identify the sweet spot for preventive maintenance and inspection frequency, you’ll save your team’s time (and hence money) without having to give up anything in return.

We understand that not everyone has the budget to access all of these tools. Fiix Foresight, for example, is only available for Professional and Enterprise tier users, while Fiix ARP is an entirely separate product. Put simply, we wouldn’t be offering these tools if we didn’t think they paid for themselves over time. We strongly believe that you get out of your maintenance program what you put in. In my experience, most managers are ready to consider a proposal if the magic words, “cost savings,” are spoken. That’s why I think tying sustainability to ROI is a winning strategy. You’ll feel good about economizing your operations, you’ll save money, and you’ll enjoy less stress with powerful tools as your decision-making allies. 

Bonus: How Others Are Winning With Sustainability

We hope these great stories serve to illustrate how sustainability can add to your bottom line, not subtract from it.

Let us know how you’re planning to take control of your data to become more sustainable--and save money doing it.