Maintenance Strategies: Which One Best Suits Your Business Needs

If you’ve spent any time researching trends in the industry, you’ll see the importance of predictive maintenance. It’s becoming increasingly popular with each passing day. The growth of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) makes it possible for companies to utilize intelligent maintenance software to gather information and connect with connected devices to become more efficient in manufacturing.

Although this specific type of maintenance has gained recognition, it’s not the only option for heavy-use equipment-based companies. There are numerous other types of maintenance suitable for any organization, ranging from small businesses buried in work orders written on paper to data-driven enterprise-wide operations, where predictive maintenance is an actuality.

Meanwhile, the facility maintenance is quite broad and encompasses the duties of various jobs; the field is further divided into distinct areas that are handled differently. The three positions that ensure in the functions of facilities management include Facility manager, maintenance supervisor, and maintenance technician.

• Facility Managers: A facility manager is responsible for ensuring that the processes within a building company are efficient and that employees or tenants feel comfortable. Technically, the job covers many disciplines to enhance aspects of the residential or office environment with regard to functionality and security.

The facility manager’s responsibilities include organizing and coordinating the installation and renovations, managing and evaluating equipment to ensure it meets safety and health requirements, forecasting the facility’s upcoming requirements, and supervising teams across divisions to ensure a peaceful working environment.

• Maintenance Technician: A technician who, working in close collaboration in conjunction with the manager of facilities, repairs equipment and fixes electrical or mechanical issues within the building.

The primary duties of the maintenance technician are solving issues that concern infrastructure or machinery and assisting with the installation of new equipment, calibrating equipment, taking preventive maintenance steps to avoid machine breakdowns, keeping track of breakdowns and histories of equipment, and conducting walkthroughs of buildings.

• Maintenance supervisor: The Maintenance Supervisor oversees repairs and maintenance of plumbing, electrical heating, ventilation as well as cooling (HVAC) as well as carpentry, painting, and other building systems.

Maintenance supervisor responsibilities include hiring and training maintenance department personnel and organizing and overseeing the scheduling and work of maintenance personnel. Conducts performance appraisals that are prompt and constructive. He is responsible for disciplining and terminating employees as required and in line with company policies.

Different Types of Facility Maintenance Strategies

Preventive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance can be defined as taking precautionary measures or avoiding equipment failures before they happen. Preventive maintenance usually involves routine inspections, updates, and proper lubrication (where necessary) adjustment and replacing parts or equipment out of date.

Presentational maintenance is a good idea to implement across various areas of your company. It can include any preventive measures that involve changing water filters regularly, cleaning the equipment you use (such as fridge condenser coils), inspecting the commercial vehicles (i.e., delivery vans), and inspecting caulking and grout to safeguard the property from water damage.

The preventive maintenance you perform will be specific to your company and must always include careful inspection of your most essential assets or your most important equipment used in everyday activities.

Reactive / Run-to-failure maintenance

This is an actual method, but it’s easy to mistake it with not having a strategy in the first place. In essence, you’re waiting for the things to fail before fixing them.

The trick is selecting the most appropriate assets for your strategy. It is important to select inexpensive items to keep in your inventory, simple to replace, challenging to maintain or inspect and possess low criticality. Light bulbs are an excellent instance. Since they don’t need a particular environment or aren’t overly large, they’re pretty affordable to stock up on the stock. When they’re exhausted, replacing them with a fresh one isn’t a hassle even. Even if you were to change them right before they expired, it’s not easy to assess how long any particular filament will last.

In general, they’re not crucial to your operation. It’s not easy to imagine a factory being forced to shut down the production line due to a burnt-out light bulb.

Maintenance Based On the Condition

As the name suggests, maintenance based on condition is based on an equipment or asset’s condition; thus, instead of setting up a routine to regularly check up on the asset, you’re monitoring it constantly and looking for any signs that could signal the beginning of trouble.

As an example, suppose you own an engine you’d like to keep. It is possible to establish a routine to monitor the temperature every three hours. It is also possible to install a sensor that continuously checks the temperature and sets alarms when temperatures are below or above the set boundaries. The idea is that the sensor will always look for signs of smoke. When it detects it, the sensor will let you know. This way, you can ensure that these tiny pieces of smoke do not have the chance to turn into a complete fire.

It can be helpful when multiple copies from the exact asset render anyone redundant. It is possible to wait for one of them to fail and then fix it knowing that once you’ve fixed it, you’ll have the others in operation. This maintenance approach can be beneficial in continuous production facilities which use assets that are rarely broken down. Instead of stopping the line for proactive maintenance and thereby incurring that you will not incur additional expenses, you keep running until something fails. Since breakdowns are incredibly uncommon, the overall cost is much lower.

Predictive maintenance (PdM)

Predictive Maintenance is a method of predicting the possibility of failures ahead of time so that maintenance can take place at the perfect moment. PdM utilizes data from sensors in machines and intelligent technology to inform the maintenance team that an item is in danger of failing. For instance, sensors can employ vibration analysis to notify maintenance staff that an item is in danger of failing. At that point, it is shut down, then inspected, and then repaired appropriately.

There is a way to execute PdM through visual inspections of equipment. Still, the most effective method to develop an effective maintenance plan is to utilize the CMMS to keep track of the meter readings. The benefit that PdM has over PM (over PM) is the potential cost savings due to less time spent on maintenance and a better understanding of the machine’s performance and any potential problems that could arise with the equipment. Furthermore, the reliance on sensor data and data ensures that maintenance can be determined from the current state of the equipment instead of a guess-based timetable or an intuitive feeling.

Also Read: 3 Core Functions Your Small Business Should be Outsourcing Today