Preventive maintenance is becoming more and more necessary in almost every field (industrial site, real estate group, health establishment, school establishment, etc.). The follow-up of the equipment is essential in order to maintain them in optimal conditions and to ensure the productivity of the company.
What is preventive maintenance?
Preventive maintenance (PM) is regular or conditional maintenance that consists of keeping equipment in working order.
The primary objective of preventive maintenance is to reduce the probability of failure and the risk of equipment breakdown and thus avoid unplanned downtime and the resulting high costs.
Preventive maintenance can be a very complex process, especially for companies with a lot of equipment. It requires careful planning and scheduling, as well as keeping accurate records of past inspections and maintenance reports to maintain control and ensure equipment longevity.
What are the different types of preventive maintenance?
There are three types of preventive maintenance:
Systematic preventive maintenance
As its name indicates, systematic preventive maintenance is distinguished by its periodicity. It is carried out at well-defined time intervals. This type of maintenance allows components and parts to be replaced regularly, which improves the productivity of industrial equipment and does not require high changeover costs.
Systematic preventive maintenance includes:
- Changing oil, seals, bearings, springs, resistors, contacts, lamps, etc.
- Adjustment of belt tension, potentiometers, pressure, etc.
- Control of levels, torque, etc
This type of invention must be done reliably to avoid the need for additional monitoring outside of inspection periods.
Conditional preventive maintenance
Conditional preventive maintenance is conditional on a predetermined type of event such as a diagnosis, a wear measurement, information from a sensor, etc. It is therefore dependent on experience and uses information collected in real time to identify and repair weak points.
The information collected may include:
- Oil level and quality
- Temperature and pressure
- Voltage and current of electrical equipment
- Vibrations and mechanical play
This maintenance, which can be continuous or periodic, makes it possible to mitigate the disadvantages of systematic maintenance and to highlight the operating condition of the equipment.
Predictive preventive maintenance
Predictive preventive maintenance is based on the prediction of breakdowns and malfunctions by monitoring and analyzing the evolution of a machine or a component It helps anticipate and schedule an intervention at the most appropriate time: not too early which reduces costs and not too late which avoids breakdowns.
This intervention is costly and only applies to elements that are critical from a safety and cost point of view, such as:
- Infrared thermography
- Vibration analysis
- Oil analysis
- Non-destructive testing (NDT): ultrasound, acoustic emission, eddy current penetrant testing.
What are the benefits of preventive maintenance?
Monitoring system
Frequent preventive maintenancereduces the probability of failure and allows intervention before breakdowns or incidents occur. This limits the risks of business stoppages that impact the company’s profitability and therefore cause production losses.
Improvement of the company’s productivity
Preventive maintenance operations are generally scheduled in advance to avoid disrupting the work of teams. Interventions can be set up during employees’ vacations or they can be temporarily assigned to another post during the maintenance operation to avoid the risks of post immobilization and activity blockage.
Improvement of the company’s security level
Preventive computer maintenance improves the security level of the company by carrying out frequent maintenance operations:
- Software, operating systems and anti-virus software are regularly updated on workstations and servers to guarantee the proper functioning of the machines and to avoid all possibilities of intrusion of a virus or a hacker in the computer system
- Rapid detection and intervention of security flaws to avoid incidents.
- Staff awareness training is conducted so that employees adopt safe practices and make appropriate use of computer tools and the Internet and help prevent dangerous behavior and limit the vulnerability of the computer system.
Better management of the computer system
Preventive computer maintenance allows companies to:
- Optimize the life of the equipment
- Detect and correct software redundancies
- Improve IT security
- Increase the performance of the computer system
Cost reduction
Investing in a preventive maintenance strategy can be financially more advantageous than early replacement of equipment It avoids the expense of technician interventions in case of breakdowns, more frequent purchases of equipment, not to mention production losses due to system slowness and malfunctions. Plus, equipment can be sold at a more attractive price.
How to develop a preventive maintenance plan?
The implementation of a preventive maintenance plan becomes mandatory when the growth of the company is affected due to poor maintenance management of its equipment. Here is a list of steps to follow in order to develop an effective and sustainable preventive maintenance program:
Identification of the company’s objectives
The first step is to set up the objectives to be achieved, so ask yourself: what results does your company expect from a preventive maintenance strategy?
If you’re looking to save money, you need to focus on reducing labor costs and unplanned production downtime, improving equipment life and product quality, etc.
Definition of action parameters
There are several action parameters to consider when developing an effective preventive maintenance plan. Among these parameters we can mention:
- Essential parameters: they include machine regulations, periodic inspections of equipment and infrastructure, etc.
- Usage parameters: inherent to the history of breakdowns and users’ feedback.
Recommended parameters: What the manufacturer says is necessary.
Preventive maintenance training
You must have people who can do the necessary preventive maintenance when needed. For this, training for maintenance tasks is critical. It can make the difference and especially save you from an extremely costly operation and a sudden shutdown of your production line.
If you don’t have the time to train your staff, you can hire an outside service to set up a maintenance plan tailored to your needs.
Planning of preventive maintenance procedures
Preventive maintenance should be scheduled, this can mean setting up daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and even annual maintenance. You can base your maintenance schedule on a monthly maintenance calendar and make sure to add every detail of every job to be done. If the schedule is set up correctly, your maintenance time will be minimized.
Communication
Even the best preventive maintenance strategy will fail if employees don’t understand their roles in it. They need to know where to invest their efforts and be aware of what will be done, who will do what, and when. This ensures smooth maintenance and avoids extra work.
If you want to increase your productivity and save money, but find these tasks difficult, we can provide you with a team of experts who will offer you a service tailored to your needs.
TDST takes care of the installation and repair of your plumbing, heating, air conditioning and ventilation systems and also ensures the regular maintenance of your systems in order to prolong the life of your equipment.