Business owners and managers are faced with the challenge of making sure their manufacturing equipment is constantly working at full capacity. The way this is accomplished is through one of two fundamentally different maintenance approaches: preventive and predictive maintenance.
A preventive maintenance strategy is certainly the more common of the two. This strategy is centered around conducting maintenance on all pieces of equipment in a fleet at regularly scheduled time intervals. Typically these intervals are based on the age of the equipment, the run time of the equipment and the cost of the equipment. Most notably, this strategy is primarily calendar driven, with maintenance scheduled all throughout the year.
A predictive maintenance strategy is far more efficient than the latter. Mostly due to the fact that this strategy is proactive and based on when a piece of equipment truly requires maintenance. While preventive maintenance would have all equipment worked on whether it required maintenance at all, predictive maintenance utilizes data collected on each piece of equipment to indicate whether or not it would require maintenance. The major downside to this approach is the cost required to implement one of these systems into your operation.
If your business was currently contemplating a switch between preventive maintenance to predictive maintenance, the infographic coupled with this post is a great resource. It will detail all of the differences between these two strategies in addition to the benefits of each. One thing is for sure, though, either strategy is better than failing to properly maintain your organization’s equipment.
While the cost of implementing a predictive maintenance strategy isn’t getting any lower, the actual implementation of said systems is becoming easier and easier. Largely in part due to the number of Internet of Things technologies increasing over time, more and more systems are able to connect to an organization’s equipment and collect, report and analyze the data that they extract. With this data, organizations are able to more accurately predict when their equipment will fail, and what work is required in order to prevent or delay that failure. \
It’s worth noting, however, that predictive maintenance is not the answer to all of your organization’s downfalls. While these systems are highly effective in eliminating unplanned downtime, they aren’t going to solve every issue. In fact, most organizations might not even get the chance to utilize one of these systems. The barriers of entry are high for newer businesses and even existing businesses. Any organization using these systems will be required to integrate them into their existing technology platforms. Meaning any staff member will need to be retrained to master these new systems. There is certainly a lot that goes into these systems, the same way that a lot is required to get the most out of them. The benefits do outweigh the costs, though, if your business is capable of handling them.
For additional information on this topic, be sure to check out the infographic accompanying this post. Courtesy of Industrial Service Solutions.
