What is Preventive Maintenance Importance, Planning, Scheduling

Preventive maintenance is generally defined as the action performed on equipment based on time or on the machine Run based schedule. Preventive maintenance is done to prevent the degradation of the component of the system with the aim of extending the life of the equipment and controlling the degradation at an acceptable level.

With the help of preventive maintenance, the life of the equipment can be increased or we can say that the reliability of the machine is increased. As we know that there is a life of a spare so after a particular time we need to replace that spares and replacing these spares comes under preventive maintenance. In addition to this, with an increase in life equipment, there is a considerable amount that can be saved in comparison to reactive maintenance.

Preventive Maintenance Adavantages

Adopting preventive maintenance has a lot of advantages which are described below:

• The life of the equipment can be increased
• A preventive maintenance schedule can be flexible and it allows you to have flexible maintenance periodicity
• It is cost-effective.
• By replacing the space on time that is consuming high energy, the cost of energy can be reduced.
• Downtime of the footprint can be reduced.
• 14 to 18% cost saving over the reactive maintenance programs.
• Learning of the technicians as they check the check-points in my manual.
• New people can be trained about the machine during preventive maintenance.

Preventive Maintenance Disadavantages

We have studied the advantages of the preventive maintenance but here are a few disadvantages as well which are given below:

• Labour is required for the preventive medicine equipment.
• There are also chances that equipment can fail.
• Sometimes we have to judge the life of this plant that it can run for a month or so. So changing the spares after a certain period of time can be costly sometimes.
• Production has to stop their machine to give it to maintenance.
• Sometimes after preventive maintenance machine didn’t run smoothly for some time which might cost production.

Preventive Maintenance Plan

The planning of preventive maintenance is very crucial and important and it should be done taking into consideration of the whole maintenance team. The maintenance plan involves two basic questions that are: what the job will be carried out and how the job will be carried out. In addition to this, there are many other questions like, why the job is to be done, where the job is to be done, and who will be the job.

It is very important that engineering knowledge must be applied for the maintenance jobs so that a proper plan should be ready with suited techniques, facilities, tools, materials, etc.

Steps for Maintenance Planning

• First of all, we should know the skill matrix of the technicians so that we can assign a particular job to a particular technician who is an expert in that field.
• After assigning the person, a job investigation should be done at which site so that a proper checklist along with the preventive maintenance sheet will be prepared that how many jobs to be carried out.
• Then step by step procedure is made on how the job is to be carried out.
• Then the required tools and other facilities lists are prepared and arranged.
• Then the total estimation time to do the job is documented with the help of work measurement technique and critical path analysis.

Preventive Maintenance Schedule

Making a schedule for preventive maintenance is not an easy task. The person who is making the preventive maintenance schedule should have knowledge about the job, techniques, facilities, and analytical ability. The maintenance scheduler must be able to obtain the information related to the

• Manpower availability
• Availability of equipment
• Availability of spare
• Availability of tools and tackles
• The time required to do the job etc.

A preventive maintenance schedule can fall into the following categories

• Daily check schedule
• Weekly check schedule
• Monthly check schedule
• Quarterly check schedule
• Half-yearly check schedule
• Yearly check schedule

Preventive Maintenance Checklist Format

A preventive maintenance checklist is to be prepared on the document having a document number that is required during the audits. A preventive maintenance checklist should include the following things:

1. General observations like checking and tightening bolts and nuts, air pressure, water pressure, gas pressure, or any other information applicable to the machine.
2. Electrical cabinet checking, Motors, current drawn by motor, voltage, the resistance value of motor, contactor, relay, or any other loose wiring to check.
3. Safety checkpoints
4. Quality checkpoints

It depends from organization to organization on how they do the PM and how they maintain the document of preventive maintenance.

FAQ

Also, Read types of maintenance