Keeping your equipment in good condition is crucial for the lifespan and productivity of your equipment. That’s why it’s essential to understand the types of maintenance available.
Preventative maintenance involves inspecting and repairing equipment at regular intervals to keep small problems from turning into major ones. Routine maintenance can prevent downtime and save your business money in the long run by preventing costly repairs.
Preventive Maintenance
Preventive maintenance is a process that helps maintain equipment and keep it operating efficiently by performing regular tasks like cleaning, lubricating, replacing parts, and carrying out repairs. It also allows you to avoid wasting time and money by catching small issues before they cause large, costly breakdowns.
The exact preventive maintenance schedule you need to perform will vary based on the equipment and the operation it performs, but using manufacturer guidelines can help you determine how often maintenance is needed. It’s also a good idea to refer to any warranty information, manuals, or receipts to ensure you have the right documentation for each piece of equipment.
There are several different ways to perform preventive maintenance, but one of the most common is a time-based approach that requires equipment to undergo maintenance after a set interval. This could be once a month or a specific number of hours.
Another approach is a usage-based approach that uses triggers based on the actual usage of each piece of equipment. This can be done using things like equipment monitors and operational hours to track how often each piece of machinery is used.
This can be a more flexible approach than time-based preventive maintenance, but it can also be harder to prepare for in terms of planning and scheduling. It’s also more difficult to get the right technicians and materials to the asset when it needs them.
Lastly, this approach also requires more coordination between the maintenance team and the equipment owner, so they have to work out which parts will need to be replaced at each interval. This can be a frustrating and time-consuming process.
Luckily, software solutions can make it much easier to implement and manage an effective preventive maintenance program. For example, a CMMS can automatically create work plans that contain all the necessary information for performing maintenance. They can also be triggered based on frequency, cycle or condition.
Predictive Maintenance
Predictive maintenance (PdM) uses a combination of technology, sensors, and data analytics to determine when equipment should be maintained so it can be used as effectively as possible. It aims to reduce maintenance costs, eliminate downtime issues, and improve the reliability of assets.
The main advantage of PdM is that it’s not based on physical inspections of individual assets, which can be costly and cause productivity disruptions. Instead, condition-monitoring sensors are placed inside equipment to record data like electrical currents, vibrations, temperature, pressure, oil, noise, corrosion levels, and more.
This information is then analyzed and stored in a maintenance management system for use by the organization’s maintenance team. It can then be accessed and acted upon in real-time.
There are several factors to consider when implementing predictive maintenance, including the types of equipment to be monitored and how often it’s likely to fail. It’s best to start with the assets that require frequent maintenance or that are highly sensitive to performance changes.
Next, the organization must implement sensors and technology that can collect, manage and analyze data. Depending on the scope of the program, this may involve installing sensors in individual pieces of equipment and connecting them to an industrial control system or hiring experts in the field who understand how predictive maintenance works.
With sensor data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning technologies in place, predictive maintenance can make better decisions about when equipment should be inspected. It can also be used to react to fluctuating sensor data before a failure occurs.
Unlike preventive maintenance, which requires the use of human intelligence and senses, predictive maintenance is more advanced because it’s based on machine-learning algorithms that can predict future equipment failures. While this strategy has a higher implementation cost, it’s worth the investment for organizations that rely heavily on their equipment to function properly.
Typically, a company will create a plan for its assets before implementing a predictive maintenance strategy. It will identify which equipment is most critical to the operation and which have high maintenance costs.
Maintenance Technology
Maintenance technology is a broad field that includes electrical, mechanical, welding and machine tools. It is a highly-skilled profession that requires hands-on experience to maintain, repair and re-program industrial equipment in factories, warehouses and other facilities.
As the demand for manufacturing equipment continues to grow, companies must keep their facilities running at peak efficiency. Having a well-trained and skilled workforce is essential in ensuring the on-time completion of scheduled maintenance as well as minimizing unscheduled downtime.
The ability to identify potential problems before they result in a breakdown can be critical in reducing downtime and the cost of maintenance. Preventive maintenance programs and predictive maintenance services provide this insight.
For example, a company may monitor the health of its machinery by measuring vibration, temperature, or pressure. Once an indicator appears that something is deteriorating, the maintenance team can make a decision to replace the equipment or repair it.
In some cases, a company may opt to implement condition-based maintenance (CBM). CBM is a new way to manage equipment that uses real-time data to prioritize and optimize maintenance resources.
CBM can be a major change for companies, as it is a form of predictive maintenance. However, it is possible to get great results from such a strategy.
With the advent of technology, it is now easier than ever to measure and analyze the condition of various types of equipment and machinery. Those findings can then be used to plan maintenance and schedule repairs in a way that minimizes production downtime.
A number of technological advancements have also created the need for trained technicians to maintain and repair complex machinery. Whether it’s turbines, compressors, pumps, valves or other sophisticated equipment, these workers are in high demand in the power plant industry, refineries, ethanol plants, manufacturing facilities, and more.
East Mississippi Community College offers a two-year technical certificate as well as a four-semester career Associate of Applied Science degree in Industrial Maintenance Technology that includes an emphasis on recognized areas of expertise needed to work in this growing field. The program focuses on skills in safety, fluid power, electricity, control systems, mechanical systems, troubleshooting, preventive maintenance, programmable logic controllers, welding, and precision machining.
Human Touch
Touch can be a powerful tool for human interaction. It can have a calming effect and alter the way we handle stress, promoting mental and physical health. It can also be a sign of safety and support emotional well-being, as well as help people feel connected to others.
As we become more dependent on technology, the importance of the human touch in service environments has diminished. This has prompted researchers to consider how firms can maintain their capacity to provide hospitable service while still leveraging the power of technology.
One of the most important aspects to consider is the type and quality of the relationship between the person or agent giving the touch and the recipient of the contact. This will have a direct impact on how the contact will affect the recipient’s feelings and emotions, as well as their reactions to it.
Several studies have evaluated the effects of touch on anxiety and depression. They have been mainly focused on touch between adult romantic partners, but there are also studies of the effects of touch in professional situations.
The calming effect of touch, in general, is thought to be due to the activation of the reward system. This system regulates our mood, and when activated, it can downregulate the activity of the amygdala, which is known to be a major stress center in the brain.
In this regard, it may be possible to enhance the calming effects of touch by introducing a positive anticipatory factor. This could be by providing a pleasant visual stimulus or a pleasant touch in the future to the individual who receives the touch.
This might lead to a hedonic experience that is comparable to that of receiving a positive touch from a loved one or from a trusted friend. However, such a hedonic effect has to be carefully tested in different contexts and conditions.
There is an ongoing challenge to design electronic skins that can identify both tactile and touchless inputs simultaneously. Such a skin would be ideal for robotics, virtual reality, and other wearable applications that require the ability to sense both types of sensory inputs.