It’s no surprise that organizations worldwide require massive amounts of maintenance per year. The thing is every company’s maintenance strategy is unique to their own operations. For the sake of ensuring each piece of equipment’s long-term health, most organizations maintain their equipment through preventive or predictive maintenance.
The former strategy is likely the most common of the two. It is a common staple for maintenance in many industries around the world. Preventive maintenance is a strategy that includes performing maintenance on each piece of equipment in an organization’s fleet at routine intervals throughout the year. This may seem counterintuitive at first, but the truth is for a majority of organizations it is effective. The frequency at which machines receive maintenance is largely based on age and average run-time. For example, older machines may require more maintenance throughout the year than newer machines. The same way that machines that have a longer average run-time will likely require more routine maintenance than those with a shorter average run-time.
For organizations looking to utilize a more diagnostic maintenance strategy, they often look to predictive maintenance. Despite being a much newer strategy, its efficiency cannot be denied. Instead of having scheduled maintenance intervals for each piece of equipment, organizations can instead invest in predictive maintenance systems that will be integrated into their machinery and equipment. These systems would then collect output data of an organization’s fleet and analyze it in order to determine the most ideal maintenance period. In addition to being a great precursor for maintenance, these systems also reduce machine failure through the same manner. The major con of these systems, though? Their price.
Despite being more expensive on average, the implementation of these predictive maintenance systems are becoming less difficult as more and more companies have made the switch. Why is this? Well, as more and more IoT technologies are connected to organization’s equipment and machinery, the more possibilities arise in regards to maintenance. These systems are able to provide owners and managers with thorough analysis and reporting of the performance of their equipment, in addition to some external data that can be contributing to additional wear. All of this information provides a clearer picture in regards to equipment failure, and the best ways to prevent this failure and extended downtime.
Important to note, however, is that this change will not always bring about inherent success to your organization. In fact, this change can also provide your employees with a unique set of challenges. The existing protocols for your employees would likely all be thrown out the window as new platforms would be required to be learned in order to get the most out of these predictive maintenance systems. Retraining existing employees in addition to having to train new employees with little to no knowledge regarding these systems will require a great deal of time. If your company has the capital available, coupled with the confidence to get employees up to speed, this strategy could be the right fit.
If your organization is currently hesitating to decide between which of these two approaches is the right fit, be sure to take some time to check out the infographic paired with this post. Courtesy of Industrial Service Solutions.