Processing the Plant Wellness Way
The Plant Wellness Way methodology is engineered to quickly improve and secure processing operations reliability and output qualityProcessing operations require a consistent and high level of equipment availability.
The result of the PWW methodology is an EAM that is ISO55001 compliant, includes precision maintenance processes, and ensures high maintenance work quality. A customizable solution to achieve operational excellence and world class quality outputs. The industry example below explores how PWW principles and processes can produce outstanding operational performance for production sites.
The example has been adapted from the latest edition of Industrial and Manufacturing Wellness with all identifying features of the company intentionally removed, included dates changed. All rights reserved by the publisher and original author.
Production Plant Performance

Figure 1. Plant Outage Durations Run Chart
When the company owners or upper management are consistently approaching the issue from the same way it can be hard to convince them that there is an alternative. However, operational performance data, such as production downtime, will never lie unless the data is poor.
Figure 1 illustrates the duration and frequency of the downtimes experienced. From the density of the outages in this chart it’s clear that some years were more trouble free than others, with clear improvements in uptime experienced over the last two years the data was recorded. Even with these improvements this operation’s downtimes were most commonly between 10 to 48 hours, representing a significant proportion of lost potential production time and revenue.
Two conclusions that can be deduced from the above graphs –
- The company is hemorrhaging money because of these failures.
- The company has engineering, maintenance and operational processes that are, unintentionally, the cause of these downtimes.

Figure 2: Distribution of Uninterrupted Production Days
With PWW, an alternative option is available.
Trailing a new approach on key problematic assets.
The Plant Wellness Way EAM methodology is designed to provide as much assurance to owners and managers alike, the tools and processes used in PWW give the users clear numerical feedback to help make the best business decisions possible.
When following the PWW method, variation is reduced by developing operating procedures to include precision maintenance and work quality assurance steps. Each new or altered process is determined based on empirical information that supports the removal and elimination of potential causes of asset failure (risk).
Maintenance is ultimately an economic decision. As such, PWW gives you the expected cost for all risk management strategies available and compares these to the true cost of each asset failing. Only the action pathways that cost less than the chance of failure will cause the company are selected. A Total Defect and Failure (TDAF) Cost Analysis helps businesses to calculate the true cost of failure. It includes the direct costs (repairs, replacement parts etc.) and the indirect costs (lost revenue, waste, administration time, etc.) of a failure event. The TDAF costs are approximately ten times that of the immediate, direct maintenance costs.
Explore the Plant Wellness Way
Click on the links below to learn more about the Plant Wellness Way approach and how you can utilize it in your operations