Imagine a noisy manufacturing floor full of machinery that are all vital to the production process and work nonstop. What keeps these devices operating at full capacity every day? Regular maintenance is the solution. Preventive maintenance, which includes proactive actions like routine inspections, lubrication, and part replacements before they wear out, is essential to many manufacturing companies. This method aids in maintaining the condition of the machinery. Reactive maintenance, on the other hand, focuses on fixing machines only after they malfunction. It's interesting that this strategy is also applied by several industries. [1]
In numerous industries, maintenance can have a big effect on how smoothly things run in the following ways:
- Unplanned downtime: Machines have to be taken offline for scheduled maintenance, which is important. This could mess up production plans and cause money to be lost. [2]
- High-cost maintenance: Upkeep costs a lot. It needs trained workers, new parts, and sometimes the whole production line has to be shut down. Industries always have to deal with the problem of how to balance these costs with keeping things running smoothly. [3]?
- The talent rope: Many industries? are having a harder time finding and keeping skilled maintenance workers. This lack of supplies can cause work to take longer than expected, be done wrong, or even pose a safety risk.
- Reactive vs. Proactive: Unfortunately, a lot of industries depend on reactive maintenance, which means fixing things when they break. This method isn't always reliable and costs a lot of money. To switch to preventive maintenance (changing things before they break), you need to spend money and change the way you think.
- Safety: Fixing things can be dangerous, so making sure workers are safe is very important. This means spending money on the right safety rules, training, and tools.
As IoT technology improves, industries are moving away from depending on old-fashioned maintenance methods and toward predictive maintenance. The goal of predictive maintenance is to find problems or repair needs before they happen.
Here's how predictive maintenance works:
- Data Collection: Industrial equipment is equipped with IoT sensors and data collection devices that collect a wide range of data, such as temperature, vibration, pressure, and operational performance measures.
- Data Analysis: AI systems process and analyze the collected data in real time, finding strange things and things that aren't working normally with a lot of accuracy.
- Predictive Models: The system uses past data to make strong predictive maintenance models based on data analysis. These models can tell you ahead of time when equipment is likely to break down or need repair, which lets you plan ahead.
- Descriptive Maintenance Analytics: This method makes descriptive maintenance analytics to learn about past maintenance patterns, look for trends and root causes, and find places where things could be better.
Predictive maintenance (PdM) offers several benefits:
- Reduced Downtime: PdM lets you schedule maintenance for planned shutdowns, which means that output stops and money is lost less.
- Lower Costs: Finding problems early on saves money on fixes and replacements that are more expensive. You only pay to fix things when they need to be fixed.
- Equipment Life Extension: Valuable machines last longer when they are maintained properly using PdM data.
- Better safety: Finding possible mistakes before they happen lowers the risks to your employees' safety.
- Data-Driven Decisions: PdM empowers data-driven maintenance decisions, optimizing overall operations.
Ultimately, it is essential to regularly maintain manufacturing machinery in order to keep it running at its best. Preventive maintenance is preferable to reactive tactics. Predictive maintenance, made possible by the Internet of Things (IoT), utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) and real-time data to identify and fix possible problems before they even happen. This method greatly improves operational efficiency by reducing costs, increasing safety, extending equipment life, and minimizing downtime. It also enables data-driven decision-making.
1] Major maintenance strategies in manufacturing industries worldwide from 2017 to 2021,Published by Lionel Sujay Vailshery, Mar 21, 2023 (Link)
2] Unplanned Downtime Costs More Than You Think, by Forbes, Sundeep Ravande (Link)?
3] Maintenance and operations: Is asset productivity broken?, by McKinsey & Company (Link)
