Devising A Maintenance Strategy Right For Your Organization

No two manufacturing operations are the same. They may share similar processes and may end up with similar outputs, but the processes as a whole couldn’t be any more different. The same can be said for the way in which these operations are supported, such as their maintenance needs. Understanding this, it’s up to the organization to identify and implement the right maintenance strategy to enable these operations. These maintenance needs tend to be split between predictive or preventive maintenance. Within this post, these two maintenance approaches will be broken down, detailed and analyzed.

Of the two, preventive maintenance is certainly the most traditional. This strategy relies on calendar-driven maintenance intervals for each piece of equipment in an organization’s fleet. The way these intervals are determined vary from business to business, but ultimately come down to two different elements of a particular piece of equipment. The age and average run-time of a machine typically dictate how often it will receive maintenance in this strategy. While this isn’t the most effective in regards to maintenance resources, it will ensure that all pieces of equipment are well maintained throughout the year.

The much more advanced maintenance strategy, however, is predictive maintenance. This strategy uses real-time data collection from each piece of equipment in an organization’s fleet in order to determine the most optimal maintenance schedule. This is accomplished through the link to the Internet of Things from each piece of equipment. These systems are able to collect and analyze performance and external data unique to the machine in order to diagnose an issue and recommend the best fix. While predictive maintenance is much more efficient than its counterpart, it is also far more expensive.

However, while the costs for these systems are often outrageous, it’s becoming increasingly easier to have them implemented into any piece of equipment an organization has. This is largely in part due to the ever expanding nature of the Internet of Things. The more technologies that continue to become connected to the IoT, the more the capabilities of these systems can continue to evolve. The analysis and reporting of these systems are unmatched in regards to predicting failure and scheduling maintenance.

However, as with anything that seems to be a sure thing, simply integrating these predictive maintenance systems into your organization is not a foolproof way to improve your organization. In fact, integrating these systems mean even more change for your employees to keep up with. Re-training long-lasting personnel with a completely different outlook on maintenance is bound to be a challenge. Not only this, new employees with next to no knowledge regarding these systems wouldn’t be able to latch on to an existing employee to learn the ropes while these systems are so fresh. If your organization has the available capital and the utmost trust in your employees, with enough dedication these systems can prove beneficial.

Hoping to find the perfect maintenance fit for your organization’s needs? The information that you might be looking for can be found within the infographic coupled alongside this post. Be sure to check it out for more helpful information regarding these two maintenance strategies. Infographic courtesy of Industrial Service Solutions.