Advanced Maintenance Solutions

The goal of maintenance is to keep your assets/equipment in working order for as long as possible at the least amount of cost. Maintenance has evolved from a mostly reactive and fix when broken approach to a proactive, condition-based maintenance approach.

The following components are crucial in establishing sound maintenance management practices:

• Measures and monitors assets.
• Condition monitoring of equipment.
• Real-time monitoring of the most critical assets.
• Maintenance decisions can be made with updated information and with more confidence.
• Maintenance programs should manage resources, parts, labour, work order management and scheduling etc.

A plain calendar-based maintenance approach is a good start for your maintenance management, but it does not consider the unique operating conditions of each piece of equipment, the environment it operates in when it’s used, temperature etc. Two production lines will rarely clock the same hours of operation for any given day or week:

• A simplistic calendar-based service approach will treat the two pumps the same even though their usage could necessitate different schedules or services.
• The total cost of ownership could increase due to unnecessary services or even early equipment failure due to inadequate maintenance.

Equipment, Materials and People

Maintenance crews must be equipped to perform their tasks as set out in work orders. Equipment and materials must be listed as part of the work order. The recommended way is to configure specific equipment/materials needed based on the specific set of tasks that will be performed as part of the work order.

Condition Monitoring (CM)

Condition Monitoring is the process of monitoring a particular condition in machinery (temperature, vibration etc ) to identify changes that could indicate a developing fault. Having a clear view of machine health can improve production quality and delivery schedules.

CM is a key input into predictive maintenance and allows for early preventative actions to be taken. This can reduce your unplanned downtime and extend the life of your equipment.