Preventative maintenance is the process of managing regular upkeep of equipment and assets to keep them running and to avoid costly unplanned downtime due to unexpected equipment breakdown.
A successful maintenance strategy necessitates the planning and scheduling of equipment repair before a problem arises.
In manufacturing operations, it is said that 15% to 40% of total costs are maintenance-related. If your factory utilizes machinery and tools, improving your maintenance practices is something you cannot ignore.
Preventative maintenance is one of the 5 key success factors behind high-performing manufacturing operations. It has a direct impact on the total cost, quality, and delivery, in any factory that relies on machines and/or tooling.
Cost Savings
Extend Equipment Lifespan
Prevention of Failures
Effective Lifecycle Process
Preventative maintenance addresses potential problems before they arise, lowering the risk of equipment failure. After equipment has broken down, often unexpectedly, breakdown maintenance is performed only to get the plant back to production again, resulting in a downward spiral of equipment failure.
There are several reasons for that:
Companies such as IBM, Bosch, Microsoft, and Amazon develop analytical tools to present actionable insights. However, only 2-3% of Chinese factories capitalize on this data. And the rest are investing in high-tech equipment without having a preventive maintenance plan.
One of the US-based engineers rightly described the situation in his factory. He said:
All these wonderful machines performed their intended functions, on test, but when they were put into operation in our plants, with our people, they were out of business so much of the time for this and that kind of failure that our overall costs, instead of going down, went up. No one had evaluated the overall probable failure rate and maintenance. As a result, we were continually caught with stoppages and with not enough space parts, or with none at all; and no provision for alternate production lines.
Is poor maintenance costing you money and causing quality issues among other problems?
Understanding Maintenance 2.0 - from zero-defect to zero-breakdown objectives.
Establishing maintenance objectives to apply the switch across the organisation.
Businesses are at high risk of incurring significant losses if systems constantly break down and consume resources. Many facilities and maintenance experts are unable to bear the cost of such damage. With preventive maintenance, such costs can be reduced or even avoided altogether.
Given the excellent opportunity for businesses to expand and scale by integrating software into daily processes, it is essential to understand which software system will help your company and how.
Want to know how a preventive maintenance system helps cut costs and increase productivity? Click below.