Any business expecting their manufacturing operation to thrive must first be willing to invest into the most advantageous maintenance strategy to fit their needs. Allocating maintenance resources accordingly is a very challenging task for businesses. In most cases, the way in which businesses typically approach maintenance is split between two principal strategies: preventive and predictive maintenance. The information in this post will breakdown and compare the two in detail.
Preventive maintenance has been a staple in the manufacturing industry for some time now. This approach is centered around the idea of running routine maintenance on all equipment at a scheduled time interval throughout the year. Not every piece of equipment will have the same maintenance interval, however. These intervals are based largely on the run time and age of a particular piece of equipment, but other factors can influence maintenance scheduling. Preventive maintenance is largely a calendar-driven maintenance strategy.
The newer alternative to preventive maintenance is predictive maintenance. This strategy disregards a majority of the philosophies of its counterpart. Rather than having scheduled maintenance for equipment or machinery at different times of the year, this approach relies on information fed from each piece of equipment to determine when maintenance is necessary. This requires a unique set of technological systems to be installed into an organization’s fleet but will in turn provide organizations with a much clearer representation of when maintenance is required. The downside? Its exuberant costs compared to the traditional preventive maintenance strategy.
While the costs associated with this maintenance strategy might be higher than most organizations can stomach, what has become increasingly easier is implementing these systems into an organization’s operation. Largely in part due to more and more organizations opting into this strategy, and thus expanding the IoT’s capabilities as mentioned previously. The more organizations that utilize this strategy, the more intuitive the insights that these systems can provide to organizations. If you’re hoping to improve efficiency through a decrease in unexpected downtime, predictive maintenance is definitely your best bet.
While the benefits for these predictive maintenance systems may seem staggering, it’s equally important to consider where these systems fall short. With such high barriers to entry, not many businesses can justify the cost in regards to their estimated risk. In addition to high start-up costs, these systems also require a critical understanding of new technology platforms that your employees have no knowledge of. In other words, your employees will likely face a rigid training course in order to properly work alongside these systems. This sort of challenge is not easily overcome and will likely require a great deal of time. However, if your organization has the capital and other resources available, predictive maintenance is likely the best strategy to default to.
Even with the information provided within this post, solving maintenance woes in any organization will still be a challenge. For more insight into how these woes can be simplified for the sake of your organization, please take a minute to check out the infographic paired alongside this post. Infographic courtesy of Industrial Service Solutions