You can avoid some expensive burn-outs if you opt for preventive maintenance and not reactive maintenance
WE will cross the bridge when it comes. That’s a nice philosophy to have in life.
But not in a plant. Certainly not with machines.
Every machine comes with a suffix called maintenance attached to it.
That’s why the term called AMCs (Annual Maintenance Contracts) is a highlight of many a sales negotiation talk too.
And yet, maintenance is orphaned once the machine gets out of the crib.
The crying baby gets the milk. So is the approach we often take with maintenance too.
But, maintenance is not just strutting about with some nuts and bolts to be used when something screeches, or howls or makes a noise.
Its scope is broad and deep and that’s probably why we still don’t embrace the right approach to maintenance.
Maintenance Approaches:
Maintenance can be broken into categories – Proactive and Reactive. Proactive is further divided into two classes- Preventive and Predictive while Reactive can be split into – Corrective and Emergency.
Reactive maintenance, the easiest approach, the oft-used approach, the out-of-sheer-habit approach. But look closer and you will find that the worst thing that a company can do is spend a lot of time in reactive maintenance.
Reactive approach includes a lot of unplanned downtime in contrast to planned downtime.
Often many reasons incline a company towards reactive way of maintenance. Like:
1. High pressure environment
2. Rigorous production schedules
3. Heavy targets
4. Top Management’s attitude
5. Poor record-keeping making proactive approach infeasible
6. Lack of automation in production-records and scheduling documents
7. Lack of awareness of means and methods of non-disruptive maintenance
8. Ease of application and out of regime
But, this kind of a company is not always a world-class company. Because world-class companies only apportion about 5 per cent of maintenance time to the reactive approach. The major part is done the preventive way. The reasons for doing that are born out of a long-term mindset, focus on sustainability, regard for safety, well-planned direction and a clear vision.
Why Reactive Maintenance costs a lot?
If a plant takes on the routine of repairing only when a problem occurs, it has to bear many outcomes of this neglectful approach:
1. Disruptions in schedules (Example- the way Japanese companies in Electronics and Automotive OEM industry are struggling with capacity-issues and inventory lags)
2. Loss of production man-hours
3. Impact on productivity and quality
4. Greater defects and market pull-outs of products with consequent impact on company image
5. Safety threats ( and associated issues with worker morale and confidence)
6. Over utilization of energy and bad environmental practices
7. Internal supply chain spill-over
8. Resulting
9. Inadequate leverage of AMC benefits
Ways to ensure Preventive Maintenance
It is not that difficult to take the preventive recipe and have planned downtimes. It’s much more beneficial and has a very positive long-term effect, not to mention environmental and sustainability contributions that come as a bonus when a machine is maintained at regular intervals. The ways to do it are simple:
1. Allocate planned hours from night-shifts or evening-or holiday-hours for planned shutdown or a machine outage
2. Automate and organize production records and schedules so as to allow preventive maintenance in an environment of clarity, non-overlap, transparency and control
3. Accumulate certain level of inventory for planned production interruption in advance.
4. Ensure administration of AMC personnel as per time and repair requirements
5. Use redundancies and back-up options for maintaining mission-critical equipment (example- in a turbine or a nuclear reactor or a steel furnace)
Choosing Preventive over Reactive maintenance is a major difference between an average company and a world-class firm.
Which side you want to be is ultimately your choice.
Yes, you can always cross the bridge when it comes but it would not hurt if you have a spare tire and a car in good order. Won’t it?
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WE will cross the bridge when it comes. That’s a nice philosophy to have in life.
But not in a plant. Certainly not with machines.
Every machine comes with a suffix called maintenance attached to it.
That’s why the term called AMCs (Annual Maintenance Contracts) is a highlight of many a sales negotiation talk too.
And yet, maintenance is orphaned once the machine gets out of the crib.
The crying baby gets the milk. So is the approach we often take with maintenance too.
But, maintenance is not just strutting about with some nuts and bolts to be used when something screeches, or howls or makes a noise.
Its scope is broad and deep and that’s probably why we still don’t embrace the right approach to maintenance.
Maintenance Approaches:
Maintenance can be broken into categories – Proactive and Reactive. Proactive is further divided into two classes- Preventive and Predictive while Reactive can be split into – Corrective and Emergency.
Reactive maintenance, the easiest approach, the oft-used approach, the out-of-sheer-habit approach. But look closer and you will find that the worst thing that a company can do is spend a lot of time in reactive maintenance.
Reactive approach includes a lot of unplanned downtime in contrast to planned downtime.
Often many reasons incline a company towards reactive way of maintenance. Like:
1. High pressure environment
2. Rigorous production schedules
3. Heavy targets
4. Top Management’s attitude
5. Poor record-keeping making proactive approach infeasible
6. Lack of automation in production-records and scheduling documents
7. Lack of awareness of means and methods of non-disruptive maintenance
8. Ease of application and out of regime
But, this kind of a company is not always a world-class company. Because world-class companies only apportion about 5 per cent of maintenance time to the reactive approach. The major part is done the preventive way. The reasons for doing that are born out of a long-term mindset, focus on sustainability, regard for safety, well-planned direction and a clear vision.
Why Reactive Maintenance costs a lot?
If a plant takes on the routine of repairing only when a problem occurs, it has to bear many outcomes of this neglectful approach:
1. Disruptions in schedules (Example- the way Japanese companies in Electronics and Automotive OEM industry are struggling with capacity-issues and inventory lags)
2. Loss of production man-hours
3. Impact on productivity and quality
4. Greater defects and market pull-outs of products with consequent impact on company image
5. Safety threats ( and associated issues with worker morale and confidence)
6. Over utilization of energy and bad environmental practices
7. Internal supply chain spill-over
8. Resulting
9. Inadequate leverage of AMC benefits
Ways to ensure Preventive Maintenance
It is not that difficult to take the preventive recipe and have planned downtimes. It’s much more beneficial and has a very positive long-term effect, not to mention environmental and sustainability contributions that come as a bonus when a machine is maintained at regular intervals. The ways to do it are simple:
1. Allocate planned hours from night-shifts or evening-or holiday-hours for planned shutdown or a machine outage
2. Automate and organize production records and schedules so as to allow preventive maintenance in an environment of clarity, non-overlap, transparency and control
3. Accumulate certain level of inventory for planned production interruption in advance.
4. Ensure administration of AMC personnel as per time and repair requirements
5. Use redundancies and back-up options for maintaining mission-critical equipment (example- in a turbine or a nuclear reactor or a steel furnace)
Choosing Preventive over Reactive maintenance is a major difference between an average company and a world-class firm.
Which side you want to be is ultimately your choice.
Yes, you can always cross the bridge when it comes but it would not hurt if you have a spare tire and a car in good order. Won’t it?
