You can’t manage what you can’t measure. That’s why, in 2019, İsdemir deployed the IBM Maximo enterprise asset management platform to improve our steel production. It’s still early, but we’ve already seen positive returns in equipment maintenance, management and operational activities.

Our group is a global iron and steel powerhouse in Turkey. We are the one of two iron and steel companies of the OYAK Mining Metallurgy Group, ranked among the top-10 manufacturers of crude steel in Europe and the top-50 in the world. As you can imagine, producing millions of tons of steel is an asset-intensive business. We need innovative technology to keep equipment running at full capacity across dozens of production sites.

This led us to embark on a project to upgrade our maintenance and workshop management systems. Our goal was to manage end-to-end maintenance activities more efficiently, optimize parts inventory, improve the useful life of our facilities, and enhance worker health and safety. We chose Maximo after IBM Business Partner OSS Bilişim developed a proof-of-concept solution that met every requirement.

Simplifying maintenance complexity with Maximo

Maximo provides a common platform for managing and maintaining assets at İsdemir and our Erdemir subsidiary. Its dashboard is a single point of control to monitor, manage and report on all phases of the asset lifecycle in our facilities. The complexities can be daunting.

For example, we classify equipment as operationally critical, important or normal, and these categories set the maintenance strategy. Maximo applies the classifications to every asset, so for critical assets we know to use preventive or predictive maintenance along with online monitoring. We may use run-to-failure maintenance for assets of normal criticality, but such decisions depend on legal and safety standards and past experience. Maximo stores the relevant information, and integration with the Watson IoT Platform assists with online monitoring.

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Advanced human resources and inventory management

Maximo also helps manage human resources. Our maintenance workers have varied levels of expertise, competence, experience and so on. With Maximo, we can assign the right person in accordance with maintenance instructions. We monitor efficiency and analyze the data to decide when to assign a team member and when to bring in a specialist. A mobile interface supports workers in the field. Plus, by capturing the experiences of our senior employees, Maximo retains institutional knowledge.

Management of spare parts inventory is another useful feature. Through integration with the financial, maintenance and warehouse departments at Erdemir and İsdemir, Maximo provides visibility into spare parts inventory by asset criticality. This helps ensure that the right materials for scheduled maintenance are on hand. We never run out or overbuy to prevent an out-of-stock situation.

A boon to legal, maintenance and regulatory compliance

Maximo serves as a repository of all legal and maintenance records. The information helps ensure that inspections and tests are done properly and on schedule, while audit reports assist with regulatory compliance.

Before Maximo, our ability to monitor and analyze enterprise maintenance data was limited. Now, the platform calculates KPIs such as equipment reliability, availability, mean time to repair, mean time between failure and mean down time. They tell us where we excel and where we need to take corrective action. Not even one year into the project, we’re already seeing an increase in the uptime of steel converters and a decrease in maintenance costs.

İsdemir’s maintenance team is just starting to capitalize on AI built into Maximo. We expect its predictive maintenance will further reduce downtime and increase operational excellence.