Maintenance management is the key to business success

Maintenance management is the key to business success

TÜV SÜD Industrie Service GmbH will present its services for the first time at Maintain, the leading international trade show for industrial maintenance, held in Munich from 14 to 16 October (Hall 1, Stand 403). Under the motto "Choose certainty. Add value.", TÜV SÜD's experts from the fields of inspection and risk management and energy and environmental management will demonstrate how plant optimization can maintain existing value while usefully extending availability.

For companies, industrial plant maintenance is a key factor in retaining competitive edge. According to the Federal Statistics Office, direct maintenance costs in Germany totalled around 175 billion euros in 2005 (most recent figures). Experts estimate indirect costs to be three to five times higher than the direct costs, or approximately 525 to 875 billion euros, so that direct and indirect maintenance costs account for around 40 per cent of total business costs.

Applying foresight in planning and maintenance helps companies to save costs, ensure availability and comply with statutory regulations. Key points here are low maintenance and operating costs and risk-oriented life cycle management of systems and components. TÜV SÜD Industrie Service GmbH supports plant operators from all sectors of industry in turning modern, intelligent maintenance management into a central factor of their company's growth and competitiveness.

Statutory regulations - intelligently implemented

TÜV SÜD's experts apply innovative procedures to support companies in closing the gap between high standards of plant availability and quality on the one hand and the need to reduce costs on the other. They document and evaluate the plants, developing optimized and cost-effective inspection strategies. The methods used in TÜV SÜD Risk-Oriented Inspection and Maintenance (RoiM) combine reliability and risk assessments based on information from physical models with plant-specific and generic data backed up by proven engineering expertise – a basis on which an optimized and risk-oriented process of decision-making can be established. "While planning used to run in five-year cycles, today flexible approaches are increasingly required", notes Dr Robert Kauer of TÜV SÜD Industrie Service. "The strategies applied are thus subjected to ongoing scrutiny." RoiM enables Dr. Kauer and his colleagues to ensure that their customers' plants receive optimum maintenance and that statutory regulations are intelligently implemented. "For example, not all components require the same maintenance intervals", explains Dr Kauer. "In addition, some types of plant component can bring production to a standstill in minutes if they fail, while failure of other types can initially be compensated for in other ways." TÜV SÜD's RoiM scheme is tailored to the needs of individual companies and aligned to the concrete issues involved.

Further information on the range of services supplied by TÜV SÜD Industrie Service can be found here and here .

Note for editors: A camera-ready picture can be downloaded here , in the main section "Current Press Photos".

Media Relations: Dr. Thomas Oberst