Mechanical Integrity (or MI) includes all management of equipment and assets in your business, from installation through its entire lifecycle and finally to obsolescence. MI is a vital, if not the biggest, part of incident and injury prevention, and critical to Process Safety Management. The safety of employees depends on the quality of the equipment, so it is vital that everything, even the smallest maintenance task, gets tracked.

MI keeps track of whether your critical process equipment:

• is installed correctly;
• operates as it should;
• is maintained well.

Additionally, with MI you keep track of compliance, make sure everything is up to date, and manage inspections.

Key Elements of MI

MI doesn’t only address safety requirements but contributes to strategies aimed at reducing risk as well as optimizing the life-cycle of your assets and equipment. The combination of reducing both risks and costs is the holy grail of the industry, and MI takes you in the right direction. The key elements of a successful mechanical integrity process include:

• Selection of the right equipment.
• Implementation and inspection.
• Testing.
• Proactive maintenance strategies.
• Selection of the right people for the right tasks.

With such a list of management tasks which include not only equipment and asset management but also people management, MI is sure to bring some challenges to the table.

Challenges of MI

MI is a critical part of incident prevention, but it’s challenging considering its scope. The first challenge is to define everything that MI encompasses for your company. The next challenge is bringing together the different systems you have in place for equipment management, communication, inspections, employee management, etc. They cannot be separated, or things will head south. A simple example: having to dig through paper or digital spreadsheets with inspection results, only to then have to find that e-mail thread in which the inspection was discussed to bring the information together. That’s a headache.

Overcoming the Challenges with Software

Software is the surest way to tie everything together: one customized environment where you can find everything, notify the right people, track your data without having to leave that environment and having to dig somewhere else. When it comes to equipment, it takes one minute to find: when was something installed, were there any difficulties, when was something last maintained, what where the inspection results, etc.

With the Mechanical Integrity module and its integration into the other PSM TenForce modules, you have a full overview of your entire work floor at a tap of your finger. Let us show you. Go here to find out more and to take our software out for a spin.