A Breakdown Of The Technology Involved In Equipment Maintenance
Any business involved in the manufacturing process understands there’s a direct correlation between successful production and healthy machinery. In order to maintain the health of all equipment in a manufacturing process, an established maintenance strategy is a necessity. As every business specializes in their own production, their maintenance needs will differ. Typically, organizations are left to decide between two separate maintenance approaches: preventive and predictive maintenance.
Perhaps the easiest method to understand is the former. Preventive maintenance is the standard approach to maintenance for many organizations worldwide. In this strategy, every piece of equipment in an organization’s fleet receives regularly scheduled maintenance throughout the year. Determining the intervals throughout the year is done by the status of equipment. Meaning older pieces of equipment will likely receive more maintenance throughout the year than newer pieces of equipment. It goes without saying, then, that pieces of equipment with a higher average run time will also require more maintenance than their lesser running counterparts. While these schedules may differ, the core philosophy is the same.
As many business owners and managers have come to understand, acquiring a competitive advantage in any industry requires taking risks. For this reason, a much fresher approach to maintenance has been seeing a rise in popularity: predictive maintenance. In contrast to preventive maintenance, rather than having set scheduled intervals, each piece of equipment is capable of notifying when they require maintenance. Through highly integrated systems, organizations are able to monitor important performance data from their equipment that indicates that piece of equipment would require maintenance. Much more efficient, but also much more expensive. More often than not, they’d cost the same as if organizations just deferred to preventive maintenance for each piece of their equipment.
Trying to justify the costs for these systems has become increasingly difficult for many businesses. However, as more and more businesses are taking the leap, the implementation of these systems is becoming increasingly simplified. This is largely in part due to the number of technologies connected to the Internet of Things continuing to increase. As more and more technologies are added to this network, the more possibilities for understanding these machines become present. As of right now, these systems can provide in-depth reporting and analysis regarding performance data of connected equipment. Organizations can then more accurately predict when their equipment will experience failure and what maintenance is required to both avoid failure and prolong the health and efficiency of the machine.
Unfortunately for struggling businesses, predictive maintenance is not the solution for all of their existing problems. In fact, most organizations won’t ever be able to afford to integrate these systems into their operations. Those that are able to afford them will be faced with the challenge of successfully connecting these systems to fit their needs. Which will require some rigid training for existing (and new) employees. However, this sort of innovation requires a great deal of patience. So, if your organization is capable to expend the capital to make this change, it will likely contribute to an increase in efficiency.
If your organization is hoping to develop some form of competitive advantage in regards to maintenance, be sure to take a moment to check out the infographic shared alongside this post. Courtesy of Industrial Service Solutions.
