Any manufacturing operation’s owners and managers should understand that in order for their production processes to continue smoothly, they’ll need to regularly service their equipment. Maintaining the equipment that organizations regularly use is typically done through one of two methods, or a blend of both. Both preventive and predictive maintenance strategies will be broken down in detail for the sake of new business owners or managers currently unsure of which strategy suits their business best.
Understanding the roots of maintenance typically simplifies this distinction. Preventive maintenance, one of the oldest maintenance strategies in existence, is derived upon a calendar-driven maintenance strategy. Meaning organizations carefully plan intervals throughout the year to service each of the pieces in their fleet. They make the decisions of these intervals based on elements age. For example, an older piece of equipment that runs more frequently will likely require more regular maintenance than a newer piece of equipment that runs half as long.
While this strategy has been known to be effective, it’s a bit resource insensitive. Its counterpart, on the other hand, is much more efficient. Predictive maintenance eliminates all the guessing necessary and instead utilizes real time data collection and analysis to decide when the optimal maintenance time is for equipment. This strategy allows for maintenance to be conducted as needed, instead of scheduling unnecessary maintenance for equipment. These systems require some expensive and technologically sophisticated investments however.
While the costs of these predictive maintenance systems aren’t decreasing by any meaningful rate as of late, they are becoming easier to implement into an organization’s operations. As they are connected to the Internet of Things, the more equipment that becomes connected, the easier it is for these systems to make more meaningful analyses. Receiving more accurate information is a result of these connections and is what gives organizations the ability to predict the maintenance required for any piece of their equipment. This efficiency is certainly unmatched by the preventive maintenance approach.
Unfortunately what many organizations erroneously think is that predictive maintenance will solve all of the maintenance issues their organization faces. This isn’t true, as ultimately regardless of the maintenance strategy your organization uses, there will always be some sort of unplanned downtime to navigate through. This is particularly true considering the fact that these systems have such high barriers of entry, meaning many organizations will never get the chance to use these systems. Those that are brave enough have experienced delays in regards to efficiency because their employees have had to be retrained with the new system which takes some time.
Don’t feel too flustered with the decision! If you believe your organization has the ability to transition over to the predictive maintenance side of things, take a minute to review the infographic featured alongside this post for more valuable information on how to ease the process Infographic courtesy of Industrial Service Solutions.