Reliability Centered Maintenance has changed the way we think about Preventive Maintenance (PM). It has caused some to question whether it is even necessary to do preventive maintenance. The truth is most manufacturing facilities would benefit from a good preventive maintenance program. It would be especially beneficial for those plants that rely on breakdown or run-to-failure maintenance. But, a preventive maintenance program is potentially risky, so it must be administered and performed properly to be successful. This paper will examine both the benefits and risks of preventive maintenance and offer some ideas on how to make it successful. We will start with a definition of preventive maintenance.
Preventive maintenance is planned maintenance of plant and equipment that is designed to improve equipment life and avoid any unplanned maintenance activity. PM includes painting, lubrication, cleaning, adjusting, and minor component replacement to extend the life of equipment and facilities. Its purpose is to minimize breakdowns and excessive depreciation. Neither equipment nor facilities should be allowed to go to the breaking point.
The amount of preventive maintenance needed at a facility varies greatly. It can range from a walk through inspection of facilities and equipment noting deficiencies for later correction up to computers that actually shut down equipment after a certain number of hours or a certain number of units produced, etc.
There are many advantages for having a good preventive maintenance program. The advantages apply to every kind and size of plant. The law of PM programs is that the higher the value of plant assets and equipment per square foot of plant, the greater will be the return on a PM program. For instance, downtime in an automobile plant assembly line at one time cost $10,000 per minute. Relating this to lost production time an automobile manufacturer reported that the establishment of a PM program in their 16 assembly plants reduced downtime from 300 hours per year to 25 hours per year. With results such as this no well-managed plant can afford not to develop a PM program.
As mentioned in the beginning of this report, preventive maintenance does involve risk. The risk here refers to the potential for creating defects of various types while performing the PM task. In other words, human errors committed during the PM task and infant mortality of newly installed components eventually lead to additional failures of the equipment on which the PM was performed. Frequently, these failures occur very soon after the PM is performed. Typically, the following errors or damage occur during PM’s and other types of maintenance outages.
The key to a successful Preventive Maintenance (PM) program is scheduling and execution. Scheduling should be automated to the maximum extent possible. Priority should be given to preventive maintenance and a very aggressive program to monitor the schedule and ensure that the work is completed according to the schedule should be in place.
In addition to explaining the importance of a good preventive maintenance program and the benefits that can be derived from it, training is probably the most effective motivational tool available to the maintenance supervisor. Maintenance and training professionals have estimated that a company should spend $1200 per year for the training of supervisors and $1000 per year for each craftsperson. In fact, due to advances in technology, if the company has not provided any training for craftspeople in the past 18 months, their skills have become dated.
It is possible to have a successful preventive maintenance program. From a cost reduction viewpoint it is essential, but it does entail risk. When the proper care is taken, the risks, however, can be minimized. In order to minimize risk, preventive maintenance has to be carefully planned and carried out by well-trained and motivated workers. The biggest benefits of a PM program occur through painting, lubrication, cleaning and adjusting, and minor component replacement to extend the life of equipment and facilities.
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