Articles & Perspectives

What Is Asset Reliability Consulting for Food Plants?

5 minute read

Asset reliability consulting helps food and beverage manufacturers improve equipment performance, reduce unplanned downtime, and maintain food safety and regulatory compliance. Reliability consultants assess how and why equipment fails and develop maintenance strategies to improve reliability, protect product quality, and keep production running consistently.

Ultimately, asset reliability is about making sure production equipment doesn’t become the reason a food plant misses a shipment, fails an audit, experiences a food safety issue, or faces an avoidable production disruption.

Key Takeaways

• Asset reliability helps food plants reduce unplanned downtime, equipment failures, and operational risk
• Food and beverage manufacturers require reliability strategies that account for food safety, sanitation, and production requirements
• Consultants can support criticality analysis, preventive and predictive maintenance, CMMS optimization, failure analysis, and MRO strategy
• Strong reliability programs help plants shift from reactive maintenance toward more proactive, data-driven decision-making
• Improved asset reliability can support higher OEE, longer equipment life, stronger audit readiness, and more predictable maintenance costs

Why Is Asset Reliability Important in Food and Beverage Manufacturing?

Food and beverage plants face unique operational and food safety requirements that make a specialized approach to asset reliability essential:

• Sanitary design requirements: Equipment must be cleanable and may need to meet applicable sanitary design standards or regulatory requirements, affecting how repairs, lubrication, and part substitutions are handled.
• Allergen and contamination risks: A bearing or equipment failure can create more than downtime. Metal fragments, lubricants, or other foreign material can introduce contamination risks and potentially result in product holds.
• Short shelf-life products: Downtime on a line producing perishable goods can mean lost product in addition to lost production time.
• Strict changeover and cleaning cycles: Maintenance windows are often tightly scheduled between production runs, sanitation activities, and Clean-in-Place (CIP) cycles.

An asset reliability consultant with food industry experience can account for these constraints when developing maintenance and reliability strategies rather than applying a generic manufacturing approach.

Related: Why Do Asset Reliability Programs Fail in Food Plants?

For food and beverage manufacturers, the financial impact of equipment reliability can add up quickly. Unplanned downtime costs F&B manufacturers an average of approximately $30,000 per hour.

What Does an Asset Reliability Consultant Do?

Asset reliability consultants assess equipment, maintenance processes, data, and organizational practices to identify reliability gaps and develop strategies for improving asset performance. Common areas of support include:

#1: Reliability Assessments & Audits

Consultants evaluate current maintenance practices, equipment failure history, asset performance, and criticality across a plant. This typically results in a gap analysis comparing current practices against reliability best practices and identifying opportunities for improvement.

#2: Asset Criticality Analysis

Not every asset requires the same level of attention. Consultants rank equipment based on the potential impact of failure on safety, food safety, production, quality, and cost so maintenance resources can be prioritized where they matter most.

#3: Failure Mode & Root Cause Analysis

When equipment fails repeatedly, consultants use structured approaches such as Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and Root Cause Analysis (RCA) to determine why failures occur. This helps plants address underlying issues, such as design limitations, lubrication gaps, or operating practices, rather than repeatedly treating symptoms.

#4: Preventive & Predictive Maintenance Program Design

Consultants can build or refine preventive maintenance (PM) programs and identify opportunities to introduce condition-monitoring technologies such as vibration analysis, thermal imaging, ultrasound, and oil analysis. The goal is to help plants move from reactive maintenance toward more preventive and predictive approaches.

#5: CMMS Optimization

Many food plants already use a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) but may not be using its full capabilities. Consultants can help improve asset hierarchies, standardize work orders, strengthen maintenance data, and make the CMMS a more effective tool for reliability decision-making.

#6: Spare Parts & MRO Inventory Strategy

Asset reliability consultants help plants identify and stock critical spare parts while reducing unnecessary Maintenance, Repair & Operations (MRO) inventory. The goal is to balance equipment availability with inventory costs.

#7: Maintenance Training & Culture Change

Reliability improvements are difficult to sustain without support from maintenance technicians, operators, and plant leadership. Consultants can train teams on reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) principles and help establish greater ownership of preventive maintenance and equipment reliability.

What Are the Benefits of Asset Reliability Consulting for Food Plants?

Asset reliability consulting can help food and beverage manufacturers with efficiency, food safety, and long-term asset performance.

Outcomes include:

• Reduced unplanned downtime
• Fewer food safety risks and product holds related to equipment failures
• Lower maintenance and repair costs over time
• Improved Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)
• Stronger maintenance documentation and audit readiness
• Longer asset life
• More predictable capital and maintenance planning

Results vary based on a plant’s existing reliability maturity, equipment condition, maintenance practices, and operational environment. Facilities operating primarily in reactive maintenance mode may have different improvement opportunities than plants with mature reliability programs already in place.

Unplanned downtime remains a widespread manufacturing challenge, with 69% of industrial businesses reporting unplanned outages at least once a month.

How Is Asset Reliability Consulting Different from Maintenance Consulting?

Maintenance consulting typically focuses on specific maintenance processes or challenges, while asset reliability consulting takes a broader view of how people, processes, data, maintenance strategies, and equipment work together to improve long-term performance.

For food and beverage manufacturers, asset reliability consulting can also incorporate considerations such as sanitary design, food safety, sanitation, allergen controls, and production requirements. This helps manufacturers address equipment reliability within the broader context of safe and consistent food production.

Related: Sanitation System Overhaul for a New Production Plant

When Should a Food Plant Hire an Asset Reliability Consultant?

A food plant may consider outside asset reliability expertise when recurring equipment failures, inconsistent maintenance practices, poor asset data, or limited internal resources are affecting production performance.

Organizations that commonly seek asset reliability support include:

• Plant managers dealing with recurring unplanned downtime
• Reliability or maintenance managers building or improving a reliability program
• Corporate operations teams standardizing reliability practices across multiple facilities
• Plants with inconsistent preventive maintenance execution
• Organizations struggling to get actionable reliability data from their CMMS
• Facilities addressing equipment-related food safety, sanitation, or compliance risks

“Asset reliability isn’t just about keeping equipment running. When manufacturers connect maintenance with production, food safety, sanitation, and equipment data, they can identify risks earlier, reduce unplanned downtime, and build safer, more consistent operations.” – Geoff Olsen, Supply Chain Practice Director at Catena Solutions

What Is the Goal of an Asset Reliability Program?

The goal of an asset reliability program is to improve the availability, performance, and lifespan of critical equipment while reducing unplanned failures and operational risk.

For food and beverage manufacturers, an effective reliability program connects maintenance practices with production, food safety, sanitation, quality, and capital planning. Instead of responding to failures after they happen, plants can use equipment data, preventive maintenance, condition monitoring, and structured reliability practices to identify and address risks earlier.

The Bottom Line

Asset reliability consulting for food plants combines reliability engineering and maintenance strategy with an understanding of the operational, sanitation, and food safety requirements of food and beverage manufacturing.

By strengthening maintenance practices, equipment data, asset strategies, and organizational capabilities, manufacturers can reduce unplanned downtime, improve asset performance, manage equipment-related risks, and build a more consistent approach to plant reliability.

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FAQs on Asset Reliability

What is asset reliability?

Asset reliability is the ability of equipment and other physical assets to consistently perform their intended functions under expected operating conditions. Reliability programs use maintenance strategies, equipment data, failure analysis, and continuous improvement practices to reduce unexpected failures.

What is reliability-centered maintenance?

Reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) is a structured approach for determining the most appropriate maintenance strategy for an asset based on its functions, potential failure modes, and the consequences of failure.

What is the difference between preventive and predictive maintenance?

Preventive maintenance is performed at predetermined intervals to reduce the likelihood of equipment failure. Predictive maintenance uses equipment condition and performance data to identify signs of deterioration and determine when maintenance may be needed.

How does asset reliability affect food safety?

Equipment condition can affect food safety when failures introduce foreign material, create sanitation challenges, compromise temperature controls, or otherwise increase contamination risk. Integrating reliability and food safety considerations can help plants identify and address these risks before they affect product.