While specific maintenance needs and schedules will vary by the organization, it remains one of the most integral elements of any organization’s longevity. This post will detail two of the most commonly used maintenance approaches, known as preventive maintenance and predictive maintenance.
Preventive maintenance is a well-established strategy that has been around for quite some time. The philosophy behind this maintenance approach is simple: perform routine maintenance to all equipment apart of a manufacturing operation at a regularly scheduled interval. This interval is often dependent on elements like the run time of an operation’s equipment, the age of the equipment, and the available down time an operation can schedule. Predictive maintenance, on the other hand, is a newer, more innovative strategy that has shown its advantages for manufacturing operations. The philosophy behind predictive maintenance is almost opposite that of preventive maintenance. Rather than having all of an operation’s equipment serviced at the same time, predictive maintenance uses data collected from the pieces of an operation’s equipment to signify when maintenance is necessary. Sounds great, right? Except the systems necessary to collect this data are much more expensive to implement than what businesses would spend just opting into preventive maintenance.
A newer, much more sophisticated strategy to maintenance is predictive maintenance. In contrast to preventive maintenance, rather than having set scheduled intervals, why not let the machines notify you when they require maintenance? This is the approach of predictive maintenance. Through highly integrated systems, organizations are able to monitor important precursor data from their equipment that would then indicate when that piece of equipment would require maintenance. Seems perfect, right? Except for the fact that these systems aren’t cheap. More often than not, they’d cost the same as if organizations just deferred to preventive maintenance for each piece of their equipment.
As many equipment owners and managers have come to understand, however, is that predictive maintenance systems are not always the saving grace that they seem. For many manufacturing operations, the barriers to entry are much too high. These systems require highly customized technology platforms that employees must be trained to master. For operations that have many moving parts, this can be difficult. Whether that be due to having to change the way existing employees look at equipment maintenance, or training new employees as new policies develop, there are bound to be significant challenges. If your organization has the capital available to invest, and you believe in the abilities of your employees to transition to these maintenance systems, predictive maintenance could likely be a great fit for your operation.
If you believe that your business could benefit from integrating a predictive maintenance system into its current operations, consider consulting the infographic accompanying this post for more valuable information on how it could possibly benefit your organization at large. Infographic courtesy of Industrial Service Solutions.