Two of the most fundamental approaches that businesses take in regards to maintenance and preserving their equipment in a manufacturing operation are preventive and predictive maintenance.
Preventive maintenance has been a staple in the manufacturing industry for some time now. This approach is centered around the idea of running routine maintenance on all equipment at a scheduled time interval throughout the year. Not every piece of equipment will have the same maintenance interval, however. These intervals are based largely on the run time and age of a particular piece of equipment, but other factors can influence maintenance scheduling. Preventive maintenance is largely a calendar-driven maintenance strategy.
Predictive maintenance, on the other hand, is a newer strategy that has begun creeping its way into the manufacturing industry. This strategy is much more dynamic than its preventive counterpart in that it uses data collected directly from an organization’s equipment to determine the optimal maintenance schedule. So, rather than having set intervals for maintenance on all pieces of equipment throughout the year, this approach determines when maintenance is truly necessary. While this strategy is much more efficient in regards to deploying maintenance resources, it is far more expensive to implement than a preventive maintenance strategy.
For those just beginning a manufacturing business, or businesses that are struggling with their current maintenance strategy, the infographic featured alongside this post is a great resource to determine which strategy is the best fit for your business. It will detail the major differences between each strategy in addition to which would be most suited for your business. Whatever the case might be, either strategy is much more efficient than running all of your equipment into the ground with lack of maintenance.
Though a predictive maintenance system is much more costly than a preventive maintenance approach, what has gotten increasingly easier over the years is implementing these predictive maintenance systems into manufacturing operations. As the number of Internet of Things technologies in this space increases, the easier it becomes to capture, report and analyze the output data of each machine in a manufacturing operation. Collecting all of this data gives organizations the ability to more accurately predict when a piece of their equipment will fail and what maintenance is necessary to avoid that failure.
While preventive maintenance may seem like the most optimal choice for every manufacturing operation, this isn’t always the case. For most organizations, the barriers to entry for these systems are just far too high. Not only will these systems require the use of highly sophisticated and integrated technology platforms, they will also require the retaining of existing personnel to work alongside these new systems. For some organizations, these systems can shake up the entire way they’d look and approach maintenance, which can lead to a long adjustment period. If your organization has deep enough pockets, employees capable of handling such technologically advanced systems, and a willingness to change, predictive maintenance is likely the solution for you.
For more information on this topic, be sure to spend some time reviewing the infographic featured alongside this post. Courtesy of Industrial Service Solutions.
