Preventative maintenance is a technique of maintenance that utilizes condition-monitoring tools to evaluate the performance of an asset in real-time. This is aimed at ensuring your manufacturing system is always operating optimally. At the heart of preventative maintenance is the Internet of Things (IoT), which allows your system to connect, operate together, analyze, and share actionable data.
In preventive maintenance, you utilize IoT to gather data, make sense about it, and pinpoint areas that require prompt attention. Good examples of systems that use preventative maintenance include vibration analysis, thermal imaging, oil analysis, and equipment observation. Here is everything you need to know about preventive maintenance:
How does Preventative Maintenance Work?
The primary goal of preventative maintenance is to lower the frequency of maintenance so that you can avoid reactive maintenance. This allows you to cut downtime and reduce maintenance-related costs.
To use preventative maintenance, you need to start by acquiring and installing the right sensors on your system. Further, you need to ensure the assets of interest, be they boilers or conveyors, are interconnected using IoT so that their performance data can be gathered progressively.
Also, you should have the right programs that make meaning of the gathered data so that changes or faults are detected in real-time and corrective measures initiated. When a problem is noted, you will be able to tell the specific resource that is faulty or that needed maintenance.
Depending on the nature of your manufacturing system, the selected computer program can even send recommended actions to the engineer/ manager in-charge. This means that you will not need to wait until the manufacturer’s recommended maintenance timeline is reached. Instead, your system will always be at peak performance.
The Main Benefits of Preventive Maintenance
When you adopt preventative maintenance, it implies that you only maintain machines/assets when required. This means that you are able to hit just on-time – moments before a possible failure occurs. Well, it is like stopping a car before a crash occurs. In industrial systems such as mining, as captured here, this could be all that you need to keep the cost of maintenance and need for equipment replacement low. Here are other benefits of using preventative maintenance.
- Keeping the time needed for maintaining specific equipment as low as possible.
- Reducing the time lost doing maintenance on your manufacturing assets.
- Cutting the cost of buying new parts and supplies.
- Gives you peace of mind knowing you have total control over your system.
When implemented well, preventative maintenance can help raise returns on investment (ROI) and cutting maintenance costs by more than 70%. This makes it one of the most important practices that every industrial entrepreneur or manager should implement in his facility. Do not wait until your system beaks down; be smart and start using preventive maintenance.
