Stop Wasting Time on the Wrong Maintenance

There are HUNDREDS of ways your equipment can fail!

Take a pump for example:

1. Foreign objects - dirt, debris, rocks, or gravel can get into the pump and cause damage or blockages. This can lead to pump failure or even damage the piping system.
2. Worn out parts - The moving parts in a pump will wear out with time and need to be replaced. If they are not replaced as per the pump manufacturer’s schedule, it leads to pump failure.
3. Corrosion - Corrosion can damage the internals of a pump and cause it to fail. Corrosion generally happens when the fluid the pump is driving is corrosive or, at times, a lack of regular clean-up.
4. Cavitation - Cavitation is a condition where air pockets are formed in the liquid being pumped. This can damage the pump and eventually lead to failure.

And so on…

That’s just for a pump.

All these different ways your equipment can fail are called ‘failure modes’.

A failure mode is simply any event that causes a functional failure.

And the best way to phrase a failure mode is by combining a noun with a verb. Something like "Bearing Seized" or "Impeller Worn".

Now, failure modes can also be characterised in different ways.

Are they hidden? Are they evident? Are they random?

Are they age related? Are they non-age related?

Not only do you need to understand how your equipment can fail…

You also need to understand the characteristics of the failure mode you’re dealing with!

And that’s because you can’t apply the same type of maintenance to those failure modes with different characteristics.

If you’re pump is experiencing a random failure mode, then that means it’s best handled by some form of condition-based maintenance task. You don’t want to resolve it using time-based maintenance.

Now, that might seem obvious…

But it is actually a very common mistake. Especially for organisations working in a reactive maintenance environment.

They just don’t have the time to optimise their maintenance.

“Just replace the parts every 6 months”. “We don’t have the time to do condition monitoring”.

As a result…

It’s either they are, overmaintaining, undermaintaining, or just simply doing the wrong type of maintenance.

If you really want to be efficient and effective with your maintenance… You need to match the characteristics of your failure mode with the right type of maintenance.

Otherwise, you’ll be wasting a lot of time, effort, and resources.

I talk about this in a lot more detail inside our course, PM100: Developing and Improving Preventive Maintenance Programs.

If you want to learn more about the different types of maintenance and how to use them for the different characteristics of failure modes…

Then check out our article, 9 Types of maintenance: How to choose the right maintenance strategy

P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are 3 ways we can help you on your Road to Reliability:

1. Want to train your team on how to improve your plant's maintenance reliability?

Enroll your team in one of our most popular online training courses:

Implementing Maintenance Planning and Scheduling—increase your maintenance workforce by 35% without hiring anyone. Reduce costs, improve safety and increase morale.

Developing and Improving Preventive Maintenance Programs—achieve higher reliability and availability whilst doing less maintenance. Acquire the knowledge and tools needed to create a highly effective and efficient Preventive Maintenance Program.

2. Want to know how effective your Planning & Scheduling really is?

Use our Planning & Scheduling Scorecard?to assess your performance and receive a personalised PDF report with recommendations on how to improve.

Use our Wrench Time Calculator?to easily calculate how much value your organisation is missing out when you neglect your Planning & Scheduling.

3. Want to start your journey on the road to reliability?

Download the Reliability Academy eBook?and discover a simple, proven framework that you can use to achieve a highly reliable plant for your organisation. Unlike other overly complicated models that use 10 to 20 elements, the Road to Reliability framework only uses 4 elements to achieve great results.