PPC is a R3,4bn company producing cement, lime, and packaging within southern Africa. It forms part of the Barloworld group, a R38bn diversified industrial company. It has 12 quarries, eight cement manufacturing plants and one lime manufacturing plant spread across southern Africa.

The company was seeking technologically advanced software solutions to support a modular generic approach, streamlining the development of Asset Care Plans (ACPs) for its geographically dispersed assets, particularly with an eye on quick adaptability to changing asset usage scenarios.

PPC approached Pragma Products about the development of a software tool called the Asset Care Plan Developer (ACPD), as well as the use of Pragma Products maintenance management software, with online integration to PPCs enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

The combination of the ACPD and Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system is intended to enable an accurate duplication of the 'real world', in a system that can be dynamically configured with the minimum effort to mimic changes to assets and asset requirements as and when they happen.

The ACPD is designed to construct an asset type tree through inheritance into detailed generic asset types with ACPs. The generic building blocks have their own ACPs which link onto physical assets across all sites to form an asset-care network across the companys sites for automated updating of continuous improvements, the company says.

The ACPD is designed to transform asset-care management from a traditionally stagnant environment to one where rapid adaptation to a fast-changing business environment can be achieved, says PPC chief engineer: operations, Joe Naudé.

Maintenance philosophies are reworked and preventive strategies captured in ACPs for more than 60 000 assemblies across PPC sites. With this approach, approximately 1500 generic assemblies have to be addressed to cover the companys more than 15 000 maintenance-significant installations, achieving significant time and cost savings, he continues.

The introduction of an intelligent asset coding convention in conjunction with the ACPD approach aims to allow for more advanced activity planning and performance analyses to support continual improvement and standardisation across sites.

In 2005, following on the implementation of the ACPD during 2004, PPC engaged Pragma Products in a three-year project, the Maintenance Optimisation Project, aimed at optimising availability, asset performance, cost and risk at its SA cement plants. A large part of this project involves the successful application of the ACPD.

A four-phase process was proposed by Pragma. The first phase focused on establishing standard asset management processes across all sites. It included an actual roll-out of ACPs in a fully configured on key system on a single site as pilot.

Phase two saw the roll-out of tested and proven solutions onto all PPC cement manufacturing sites in SA.

Phase three involved the introduction of more on-key functionality and the roll-out of ACP-based schedules to all primary equipment. A 5% cost improvement was set as a goal for this phase.

During phase four, which will run into 2008, it is intended that ACP schedules will be rolled out to all equipment with more advanced planning, functionality and continuous improvement. Significant improvements in plant reliability and availability are expected during this phase, combined with a 10% cost reduction.