In industrial maintenance, it is important to understand the different maintenance types and their advantages and disadvantages.
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Preventive Maintenance
Preventive maintenance is a crucial strategy for ensuring the longevity and reliability of a company’s machines and assets. This type of maintenance is performed at established frequencies, which are determined by the control variable.
To ensure effective execution of preventive maintenance, resources must be allocated according to the manufacturer’s recommendations.
Maintenance plans are essential for preventive maintenance, as they provide a framework for executing standard activities in a period measured in terms of the control variable.
For instance, a maintenance plan for a cart may involve activities that are executed in terms of kilometers. These plans are created based on the manufacturer’s recommendations for each machine.
A standard activity plays a crucial role in determining the procedures, parts, time, and labor required for maintenance, based on the control variable’s value. This activity comprises:
- Tasks that need to be performed during maintenance
- Spare parts that need replacement
- Type of labor required, such as electrical technical personnel, mechanics, painters, or lubricators
- Total time required to execute the maintenance activity
The above components enable us to create budgets and schedules for equipment and resources. With established intervention dates for machines within the production area, the equipment’s availability is not impacted.
Advantages of preventive maintenance
Preventive maintenance offers several advantages, including:
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- Programmed Maintenance: With preventive maintenance, the stoppage of machines can be scheduled without affecting the production schedule, thanks to maintenance plans and variable controls.
- Spare Parts Availability: Spare parts needs can be calculated and purchases can be requested with a determined time frame, helping to avoid last-minute purchases.
- Availability of Technicians: The planning of preventive interventions includes scheduling the shifts of technicians, improving shifts and workload of technical staff.
- Decreased Corrective Maintenance: Executing preventive maintenance according to an established maintenance plan should decrease corrective maintenance, as it helps to prevent unplanned failures.
- Cost Savings: Preventive maintenance can lead to economic benefits by decreasing corrective maintenance. The lost time of machines can be diminished, lowering production and maintenance costs, and improving company productivity.
Disadvantages of preventive maintenance
Preventive maintenance has few disadvantages, but one of the main ones is the vulnerability of the control variable. If it is not properly recorded or there are errors, it can significantly affect the scheduling of preventive activities.
Such errors can cause preventive interventions to be advanced or delayed; resulting in additional costs due to premature replacement of spare parts or delays that could lead to corrective maintenance.
Another disadvantage is when the maintenance plan is not tailored to the specific machines. Mismatched frequencies can cause the machine to be serviced unnecessarily or to never be inspected for a critical element that is essential for proper operation.
This underscores the importance of ensuring that the maintenance plan is aligned with the manufacturer’s recommendations and the actual needs of the equipment.
Corrective Maintenance
In industrial maintenance, corrective maintenance involves repairing equipment breakdowns as they occur. It is an unscheduled stop that is not included in the maintenance plan, which can disrupt operations and generate additional costs. As this type of maintenance is urgent, it directly impacts the reliability and availability of equipment.
Users of the equipment and maintenance personnel are responsible for identifying and repairing failures, respectively. However, one of the main disadvantages of corrective maintenance is that users often report damage only when it has already prevented them from continuing to work.
Advantages of corrective maintenance
Corrective maintenance involves repairing equipment breakdowns as they occur, rather than as part of a planned maintenance schedule. While it is generally viewed as a less desirable option than preventive maintenance, there are still some benefits to consider:
- Updating and improving preventive plans: Constantly monitoring corrective activities can help identify recurring issues and improve preventive maintenance plans. This includes tracking statistics such as time between failures, types of spare parts used, and technician intervention times.
- Warranty claims: In cases where equipment failure is due to manufacturing defects, corrective maintenance can provide evidence to support warranty claims against the manufacturer.
Disadvantages of corrective maintenance
Corrective maintenance has several drawbacks. Since it is an emergency, it requires prompt attention from the maintenance team, which doesn’t allow for a thorough analysis of the cause of the failure.
Furthermore, corrective maintenance often disrupts the maintenance department’s previously scheduled tasks, resulting in overtime pay for technicians and increased workload.
Another issue is the unavailability of spare parts, which may delay repairs and increase production losses. In addition, the lack of a proper record-keeping system for corrective maintenance interventions can result in equipment failures being repeated; as the root cause may not have been identified and addressed.
Overall, while corrective maintenance can be necessary in some cases, it is more costly and disruptive than preventive maintenance. Thus, it is advisable to prioritize preventive maintenance to avoid corrective maintenance situations as much as possible.
Predictive Maintenance
Predictive maintenance is a maintenance approach that involves continually monitoring the condition and performance of equipment using specific techniques.
Unlike other types of maintenance, predictive maintenance aims to predict the state of a machine without intervening directly in it. By doing so, the goal is to intervene just before the machine fails.
The purpose of predictive maintenance is to detect failures and defects in the early stages; to prevent them from manifesting during operation and causing emergency stops and downtime; which can result in financial losses.
In addition to avoiding these negative impacts; predictive maintenance can also create opportunities for cost savings in the execution of preventive maintenance and overall operation.
Advantages of predictive maintenance
Predictive maintenance provides several advantages, such as:
- Timely interventions: Predictive maintenance allows identifying and replacing elements of a machine at the right time, which can result in cost savings when compared to preventive maintenance, which follows pre-established frequencies.
- Increased availability of critical equipment: Implementing a predictive maintenance program can significantly increase the availability of critical equipment, resulting in improved production and reduced maintenance costs.
- Improved maintenance plans: Predictive maintenance can update or modify frequencies established in maintenance plans for parts or elements of machines. Moreover, it allows testing new parts and monitoring their duration and performance closely.
Disadvantages of predictive maintenance
One of the main challenges of implementing predictive maintenance is the significant investment required, not only in terms of finances but also in personnel training. This maintenance strategy utilizes advanced techniques that often require specialized equipment and specific training for technicians.
Comprehensive training is necessary for both data collection and analysis in order to interpret the results accurately.
Modifying Maintenance
A type of maintenance aimed at modifying equipment to achieve production changes or increase reliability and availability is known as modified maintenance. This maintenance is performed at different stages of a machine’s life cycle.
During the initial stages, modifications may be required to ensure smooth operation of the equipment. Similarly, changes may also be made to facilitate maintenance during operation.
In some cases, modifications are performed to eliminate the causes of frequent failures after a failure analysis has been conducted.
Another scenario where modified maintenance is employed is during the later stages of a machine’s life cycle, where overhaul maintenance is necessary. This involves rebuilding parts of the machine to extend its useful life.
During this maintenance, modifications to the original design can be made to introduce improvements that positively impact production and maintenance.
Overhaul Maintenance
Overhaul maintenance is a preventive maintenance type that involves checking the equipment at scheduled intervals before any potential failure. The purpose is to leave the equipment in a state of “zero hours” of operation, similar to when it was new.
During overhaul maintenance, parts with lower reliability are replaced or repaired to increase availability for an estimated period before the next preventive intervention.
One of the main advantages of this type of maintenance is that it is planned; enabling the creation of budgets for materials, time, and labor. It also minimally impacts production as machine stops can be scheduled in advance.
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