When it comes to equipment maintenance, reactive maintenance is not only costly but also messy and rarely fun. You need to get someone to diagnose the fault, get the parts, and implement a rapid solution to get the faulty equipment back online. Whether using internal or external resources to get the job done, this is rarely an efficient process.
Waiting for equipment to fail also means that it experiences more extensive damage and wear. The ultimate result of this is premature end-of-life and replacement.
To minimize downtime, the manufacturer recommends a planned maintenance program for all complex equipment. By following this programme, you can significantly decrease the total cost of ownership for your equipment. This is in contrast to solely relying on reactive maintenance, which can be much more costly in the long run.
The US Department of Energy has found that just doing this can save between 12% and 18% over the lifetime of the equipment [1]. In addition, it was discovered that predictive maintenance offers benefits that go beyond just planned maintenance. These benefits include savings that exceed the 18% achieved through planned maintenance alone.
What is a predictive maintenance programme?
What’s better than watching your favourite production machine running smoothly?
After seeing so many operation cycles, you become attuned to the subtle signs that indicate something is amiss. The presence of even a minor judder or squeal may be a sign that something is wrong with the system. It is impossible for an individual to perform this task continuously; however, a computer is capable of doing so. That is what a predictive maintenance programme does.
A computer continuously monitors all the data coming from a piece of equipment. It tracks data from mechanical, electrical and logistics sensors to detect the emergence of anomalies. After analysing this information, it identifies common expected failure modes and alerts an operator to the necessary maintenance tasks.
What are the benefits of predictive maintenance?
Some people expect predictive maintenance to reduce maintenance costs, but this is rarely the case. You can expect another layer of monitoring, along with extra planned outages and maintenance, to cost more. The question is, why perform this action?
1) Keep employees safe
Ensuring the safety of employees working on the shop floor is of utmost importance. This is why it is crucial to have an effective approach to predictive maintenance. Correctly commissioned, a predictive maintenance programme can warn an operator well in advance of a potential breakdown. Not only preventing equipment malfunctions or failures but also alerting nearby operators to the emerging risk.
2) Reduce environmental impact
Unexpected mechanical failures, chemical leaks, and machine fires don’t just harm employees. These events have a negative impact on the ecosystem as well.
There is a correlation between the age of machinery and a rise in carbon emissions and power consumption. Worn or unlubricated moving parts need more energy to move, with the extra dissipated as heat. It is possible for the air, ground, and water to become contaminated by fires, spilled oil, and chemicals.
Finally, you will need to replace and get rid of any failed parts and machinery.
Predictive maintenance offers many more major advantages. It helps prevent environmental contamination and toxic emissions. Also, it reduces energy consumption and minimises the amount of garbage transported to landfills.
3) Extend machine life
By not allowing your equipment to run outside of nominal operating characteristics, it should last longer. Reducing the need to raise capital to replace it. A study by McKinsey & Company found that predictive maintenance can result in a machine downtime reduction of between 30% – 50%. Also, it was discovered that it extends the life of the machine by 20 to 40 percent. [2]
In summary, the benefits of equipment predictive maintenance are extensive. It will help to assure the safety of employees working with the equipment. As well as, reduce the total cost of ownership, and reduce its environmental impact.
[1] Operations & Maintenance Best Practices Guide: Release 3.0, US Department of Energy
[2] “Manufacturing: Analytics unleashes productivity and profitability”, 14 August 2017, McKinsey & Company
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7 min Lesezeit
November 22, 2024
