Sil Bruijsten
Tomáš Hladík
Palle Grøndahl

European Training Committee, EFNMS

Bruijsten           Hladik               Grøndahl

While talking about sustainability, we could start with a populous list of definitions available – let us mention a few for example:

• Sustainability is the capacity to endure through renewal, maintenance, and sustenance, or nourishment. [1]
• Sustainability is increasingly viewed as a desired goal of development and environmental management. [2]

In general sense, sustainability describes that human activity’s cause little or no damage to the environment and therefore able to continue for a long time [3].

According to the Bruntland Commission of the United Nations [4], sustainability has been seen as a part of the concept of sustainable development. The definition “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” is widely accepted.

For maintenance this has to be translated into a useful instrument and Total Costs of Ownership (TCO) makes it possible to visualize the costs of maintenance processes. TCO consists of three main elements: initial costs, energy costs and maintenance costs. These elements will be analyzed in a costbenefit model to measure the effect on our environment and in this way it is possible to see what maintenance really means for sustainability.

Making a Sustainable Life Cycle

Physical assets (for instance production equipment) pass through several stages during their life-cycle: concept and design, production, procurement, installation, operation and maintenance, renewal and disposal – as presented in the Bermuda triangle diagram (Figure 1) developed by Tomas Hladik (2013) to visualize in what stage of the life cycle a physical asset generates costs or revenues.

Life-cycle costs are accounted as all relevant and identifiable costs in all the phases of a product’s life-cycle from the concept and acquisition until demolition or dismantling. Each component consists of a variety of costs expressed in cash flows regarding the use of an asset. Social costs, which are not identified in this way, are beyond the scope of this research.

Bermuda triangle in asset life-cycle (Tomas Hladik 2013).

For the owner of an asset, the asset life starts from its procurement – for example  investment into a new machine. After procurement the asset needs to be installed and launched into operation and during the operation phase the owner expects certain profit from the use of the machine. However, effective operation is impossible without proper maintenance, so maintenance creates value. When the equipment achieves certain age in its operational life and further operation is not possible or is inefficient, a major overhaul – renewal of the machine – is needed. The life-cycle of the asset is ended by its disposal when the owner decides not to continue the operation and perhaps replaces the machine with a new one.

The only profit-creating stage of the lifecycle is operation, all other stages consume money in the form of costs or investments. There is a strong relation between the expenses during the stages of procurement, installation and maintenance (and renewal) and the profits gained in the stage of the asset operation. Inappropriate savings, especially in the phases of the initial asset investment, will inevitably hit back as poor operational parameters in the operational stage: high cost of operation, poor maintainability, additional cost of installation, renewal, replacement and disposal.

From the sustainability perspective, it is essential that all stages of the asset life-cycle are managed in an integrated way. If it is a strategic goal to have little or no impact to the environment, companies can focus on consuming as few resources as possible and they can strive to be as productive as possible. Using fewer resources explains itself, but why being more productive? Producing more products within the same period of time means that the energy consumption during idle and basic production time, can be split out to more products leading to less energy used per unit produced. Therefore sustainability is supported by higher productivity which means that it is important in the design stage to define assets which are as productive as possible and which use as few resources as possible in the operation stage.

High productivity is based on reliable assets which are easy to repair when they break down, which are designed to support an effective use and which produce products at the defined quality level. Furthermore, the asset should have the necessary flexibility and capacity to take future products and sales forecasts into consideration. This means that the design of such an asset cannot be done only by engineering. All parts of a company which are influenced by the asset have to be involved in the project design stage to define an asset that meets the demands of productivity and resource consumption.

Maintenance and Sustainability are Related

The way that maintenance is performed, has typically a high impact on the consumption of the resources, such as energy, water and raw materials. If the basic maintenance tasks like adjustment, cleaning, lubrication and retightening of items are performed correctly, they will lead to a more effective use of resources, energy losses will be reduced and items will typically last longer. It is possible to support the asset reliability leading to higher productivity through optimum planning of the maintenance activities – performing right tasks effectively on right assets using right maintenance procedures (T. Zaal, 2011).

Data forms the base of analysis of the maintenance performance and this means that targeted and optimized maintenance activities and maintenance logistics can be developed only, if a well-functioning IT system used by motivated employees, can provide firm and valid data.

Sustainability Matters

Cradle to Cradle is a model to become sustainable and it is becoming an increasingly familiar concept all over the world, many initiatives are already taken and the model is integrated in many new designs. The term C2C was introduced in 2002 by Braungart and McDonough [3]. You could simply state that by acting according the C2C model, you act sustainably and consider the life of future generations – considering your carbon footprint is closely related to this model.

Also we should talk about refurbishment in order to increase the productivity efficiency and to reduce the energy consumption. Maintenance, Repair and Operations are actions which have the objective of retaining or restoring assets to a state in which it can perform its required function. The contribution to limit the waste in industry and in building environment is huge and the decision to demolish or to refurbish should be supported by a calculation over the life time.

There is no question about if it is necessary to take all possible measures to become sustainable, the resources are limited and the population is increasing and if we want to survive as mankind, we need to act sustainably.

Learning to be Sustainable

There are not many educational institutions in Europe providing technical education in the field of sustainability. Most of the programs are all from business institutes or concerning a high abstraction level, such as Rotterdam School of Management, Bradford, HEC Paris, Anglia Ruskin Cambridge, and Cranfield University. There are only a few technically oriented programs, like HU, Utrecht Netherlands, Vesko, Fredericia Denmark, Robert Gordon, Aberdeen UK, Uclan, Lancashire UK and TU/e Eindhoven Netherland, and we need more!

Vesko in Denmark and Hogeschool Uthrecht in The Netherlands have developed a part time Master Program for professionals in the field of Maintenance and Asset Management. The general objective of the program is to train the participants to become Masters of Engineering who fully consider the design for all phases of the life cycle. They contribute to technical development, improvement or maintenance processes within an environment of collaborative and concurrent engineering in a multidisciplinary context.

A Master of Engineering graduate is expected to be able to act independently and during the program they are stimulated to exercise independence and initiative. This means that the program chooses teaching methods that encourage independent and critical learning, specifically problem-based and project-based learning. The student is responsible for his own learning process and academic career, the program’s obligation is to provide with the conditions and support needed to pursue the academic goals.

The program provides supervision and counseling in various areas of the study and learning process. There are distinguished two types of supervision: coaching by a personal coach and supervision/counseling by the program manager in the event of personal problems or individual academic problems.

»»Additional information

››www.vesko.dk

››www.moe.hu.nl

»»Source

› [1] Wikipedia, 2012

› [2] Becky J. Brown, Mark E. Hanson, Diana M. Liverman, Robert W. Merideth Jr.; Global Sustainability: Toward Definition, Environmental Management, Nov 1987

› [3] Cambridge Dictionary 2012

› [4] Brundtland, G., 1987. Our Common Future, Oslo: UN.

› [5] Braungart, M. & McDonough, W., 2002. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things.