One of the major keys to success for any organizations’ production processes is their maintenance philosophy. Selecting between which maintenance strategy is right for a business can be extremely difficult. This post will detail two of the most successful maintenance approaches within the manufacturing industry: preventive and predictive maintenance. The variance between the two is immense, but their end goal of ensuring an equipment’s health are the same.
Beginning with the most traditional of the two, preventive maintenance has long been the safest route for manufacturing operations. That being said, it’s been proven to be less effective in regards to unexpected downtime compared to predictive maintenance. Either way, this approach requires routine maintenance on all equipment based on regular intervals set forth by a business. This means any piece of equipment may be left under maintained throughout the year. On the other hand, other equipment will be over maintained where it doesn’t need to be. While this type of approach is deemed safest, it can be challenging to keep up with
The goal of predictive maintenance is to eliminate these incorrect maintenance intervals and reduce unexpected downtime. Rather than relying on a calendar-driven maintenance approach, this strategy utilizes integrated technology to determine the most optimal maintenance intervals for each individual piece of equipment. This is accomplished through live collection of output and external data of each piece of equipment. After real-time analysis of this data, expected failure is much easier to estimate. The major barrier of these systems are their costs.
While the value provided is so immense, the cost often keeps organizations from investing into these systems. Saving capital is always atop the list of priorities for businesses, which means preventive maintenance is a much simpler choice. However, as more businesses do invest into these systems and connect their machines to the Internet to Things, interpretation and analysis become much more accurate. With more data comes improved predictability, meaning machine failure rates decrease. If an organization is prioritizing efficiency and limited equipment downtime, investment into these systems can be essential.
The costs of these systems are not the only issue, though. Their sophistication requires a bit more out of each team member within an organization. Most of the time, the strain comes from the amount of training employees must receive to run these systems. Many businesses will struggle to make the transition as a result of this. However, those that do manage to master these systems, see immense improvements in their equipment output.
Searching for more information on how these systems operate within the average manufacturing operation? Take a moment to check out the infographic featured alongside this post for some more valuable information on how each of these maintenance philosophies can impact your business. Courtesy of Industrial Service Solutions.
