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One of your facility’s most important responsibilities is keeping your equipment running. Minimizing unplanned downtime and low repair costs are essential to running a successful facility. Investing in predictive maintenance plans can be the solution you need to end costly reactive maintenance.
When you run your machines, it is inevitable that they will eventually wear down and break. Servicing your machines after they have broken down can halt production, impact employment, and even be dangerous to the machines and your employees. Up to 30% of all manufacturing deaths are related to maintenance activity*. Running a piece of equipment to the point of failure could cost up to 10 times as much as a regular maintenance program**.
Implementing a scheduled maintenance program that follows the manufacturer’s guidelines, also known as preventative maintenance, is undoubtedly a step in the right direction. However, these programs don’t consider the machine’s use or environment, which can also impact its production ability.
Predictive & proactive reliability programs consider the equipment’s condition, the environment, and performance level to allow you to make scheduled repairs when they are genuinely needed.
When you test and analyze your equipment in its working environment, you can base its maintenance needs on actual world data instead of a generic manufacturer’s maintenance schedule that doesn’t consider the outside influences that can impact your equipment. When a manufacturer recommends, for example, replacing a filter, they have no way of knowing the amount of dirt and dust in your particular environment. Therefore, only following a manufacturer’s maintenance schedule can still result in equipment failure.
Discovering that equipment is beginning to fail early can also prevent you from being caught off guard when replacement parts may be challenging to locate. If a machine does break unexpectedly, it may only take a few hours to fix it, but it may take weeks to get a replacement part. This downtime can result in lost revenue, unproductive employees, missed deadlines, and damage to your company’s reputation.
There are countless upsides to implementing a predictive maintenance program at your facility. Your equipment performs better. Bearings are adequately lubricated, motors don’t overheat, everything is properly balanced, and your machines become more reliable. A successful predictive maintenance program is designed to extend the life of your equipment so you run them longer before they have to be replaced. These programs are also designed to save you money on replacement parts, fewer repair calls, fewer maintenance supplies, and decreased power requirements. Predictive maintenance is highly cost-effective, saving you roughly 8%-12% over preventative maintenance and up to 40% over reactive maintenance***.
RPMs (Reliability & Predictive Maintenance Services) offers a variety of testing and monitoring programs to deliver the information you need to run and maintain your equipment safely on your timeline. Getting you this information and helping you understand it before your equipment fails is the key for you to run a safe and efficient facility. Our trained staff can assist you in High Resolution Vibration Analysis, Oil Analysis, Infrared Thermography, Ultrasonic Leak Detection, and much more.
*-Grihasoft.com May 2021
**-Buildings.com | 2018
***-U.S. Department of Energy