FOOD & BEVERAGE
EMBRACING CONDITION-BASED MAINTENANCE
Louise Liddiard, Key Account Manager Food & Beverage, Schneider Electric, explains the benefits of condition-based maintenance, using operational data to gain insights into equipment performance
D
igitalisation can achieve sustainability, resilience, and reliability for process industries such as water or food and beverage processing. Integrating digital technology with brand new equipment can be more straightforward than working with legacy systems. Process industries typically face the challenge of digitalising legacy equipment on critical lines, which are often complex and cannot easily be shut down. This challenge should not prevent leaders from pursuing operational excellence. By turning to a service partner, companies can draw on expertise, modernise their sites and shift legacy assets to condition-based maintenance (CBM).
Many facility managers are dealing with complex electrical systems made up of both new and legacy assets. Issues with these systems often lead to unplanned downtime, a 2024 report by IMechE, in collaboration with RS, reported the biggest single cause of unscheduled downtime to be ageing assets, having increased from 28 per cent the previous year to 29 per cent.
CBM involves gathering and analysing operational data to gain insights into equipment performance. Constant monitoring of key parameters such as vibration and temperature creates a baseline – and when data falls outside of the normal range, an operations team can plan to carry out maintenance activity, such as replacing spares or filters, during a planned outage and before failure. This improves on traditional reactive maintenance, where operators wait for a part to fail before replacing it, and time- based maintenance, where operators use a schedule to plan maintenance tasks. The advantages of CBM are that it can reduce electrical failure and unplanned downtime by up to 75%, reduce overall downtime by up to 40% and extend asset
26 JANUARY 2026 | PROCESS & CONTROL
lifespan. It also cuts the need for site visits as specialist service engineers will arrive on site with the right spares and tooling for the job. Nestlé’s Nescafé soluble coffee factory produces one million jars of soluble coffee and operates 365 days per year. In April 2020 a short circuit inside an unmonitored section of the main substation resulted in a 14-hour shutdown, costing Nestlé approximately $588,000. Because this section wasn’t digitally connected, engineers were not alerted that equipment was at risk.
To avoid this happening, Nestlé has now moved to a predictive maintenance approach by modernising their production equipment with sensors and subscribing to a service plan. This shift has helped the plant prevent multiple costly outages annually, while getting real-time remote visibility on asset health to achieve business continuity and increase operational efficiency.
This example shows that advanced digital capabilities are not limited to new assets. Best- in-class options can be applied to legacy equipment. CBM delivers the greatest value when applied to high-impact assets where downtime incurs significant cost. Meanwhile, scheduled or reactive maintenance approaches can be used with non-critical systems.
A service partner can provide support by deploying CBM on existing assets without the need for complete replacement. This enables businesses to access the full potential of legacy assets. The essential first step towards CBM or predictive maintenance is an audit to establish the type, age and criticality of systems. This provides the insight needed to define a strategic roadmap for CBM adoption – a service partner can help to create a plan that is phased in line with the available budget. Both the food processing and water
industries are highly regulated, and while specific regulations differ, both see scrutiny around environmental protection that drives the need to maintain equipment properly. New legislation being introduced means that businesses must actively improve sustainability as well as meeting existing environmental rules. This presents challenges when reacting to legacy maintenance issues. At the same time, cutting edge digital capabilities bring a need for new skills. It’s essential to combine the talents of apprentices and graduates with the knowledge of legacy equipment and processes held by experienced workers. Next-generation service plans offer a low- risk way to address modernisation, sustainability, and the skills gap. A good service partner will unlock the full potential of connected products and systems by drawing on a team of experts with specialist knowledge. They can proactively monitor, support, maintain, fix, advise, and empower teams to seek continuous improvement. Two other areas where a service can plug the skills gap is by delivering training to in-house teams and by pulling in engineers with specialist expertise for tasks where maintaining full-time specialist roles is neither cost-effective nor sustainable. In an era defined by digital transformation, legacy equipment in the food and beverage and water wastewater sectors must not be overlooked. By embracing CBM and digital support from a service partner, organisations can unlock increased reliability, efficiency, and sustainability without replacing valuable systems.
A whitepaper entitled ‘Embrace condition- based maintenance for your equipment’ is available on the Schneider Electric website.
Schneider Electric
www.se.com
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