A large part of keeping a company running efficiently and profitably is ensuring that all equipment and machinery is operating optimally. To do so, preventive maintenance needs to be conducted. When small maintenance tasks go overlooked for long periods of time, problems often follow; production errors, work injuries, and asset damage can all occur if careful tracking and maintenance aren’t followed. A breakdown in critical assets is costly both regarding repairs as well as downtime and delays in a company’s productivity.
The following five-step strategy will help your organization establish a world-class preventive maintenance program and experience the resulting operational gains and prevent those unexpected problems.
1. Review the current maintenance strategy
An insight into the current asset portfolio and maintenance programs will help understand critical gaps and areas for improvement.
2. Determine systemized operating procedures for reactive and preventative maintenance
Simple procedures outlining the types of tools to be used on particular maintenance requests and establishing standardized operating procedures across the board can greatly improve the outcomes from both reactive and preventative maintenance.
3. Set up a reliability and maintenance policy with an improvement plan
Planning is the key to becoming more cost-effective with asset maintenance activities. Establish a sound reliability and maintenance policy that incorporates an improvement plan to prevent failure.
4. Attain perfect execution of preventive maintenance in line with the industry rule
Sporadic preventive maintenance practices can limit the effectiveness of the maintenance procedures.
Practice a 10% rule of preventative maintenance i.e., the task must be executed within a 10% variation of the time-frequency of the request.
For example, a 60-day preventative maintenance activity must be completed within three days on either side of the due date for optimal maintenance outcomes, therefore propelling into a world-class preventative maintenance organization.
5. Leverage technology to advance your preventative maintenance program
Over the past decade, automation using the right technology has significantly helped asset-intensive organizations reduce costs, both from an operational and people standpoint.
An Enterprise Asset Management solution can provide the key technology enabler for an organization to realize these benefits through the implementation of a preventative maintenance approach to managing its operational assets. An effective EAM will reduce breakdowns and improve the availability and productivity of critical assets through a risk-based preventative maintenance approach aligned to service, cost and risk outcomes.
Once a reliability and maintenance policy and associated improvement plans are in place, it requires constant refining to ensure it meets the dynamic demands of the industry and organization.
In fact, organizations with world-class preventative maintenance programs assess the current state of the program quarterly and how it can be improved. Once established, it opens doors to extend an organization’s maintenance program beyond that by integrating predictive maintenance techniques and technologies.
In conclusion, asset availability is directly correlated with the company’s maintenance strategy. Reactive maintenance generally yields lower asset availability than preventative models.
