Redefining maintenance practice from preventive to predictive

Internet of things has altered the way consumers approach towards the aspects of everyday life, particularly in the area of predictive maintenance industrial internet of things (IIoT) is making its mark in the business.

Although treated as separate elements, preventive and predictive maintenance, Reliability Engineering, equipment history, functional pride and quality assurance are supportive to each other. Success of the preventive and predictive maintenance program is dependent upon the existence of the other three elements. While planning and scheduling assure the effective utilization of resources to sustain an established proactive maintenance program.

Predictive maintenance is the complement of preventive maintenance. Repairing or replacing a part or system when there is a failure is extravagant, often leads to unplanned downtime. The operations team practices predictive maintenance to prevent failures, which can lead to cases of deploying resources or replacing equipment before the failure.

Businesses are now practicing predictive maintenance through smart sensors and artificial intelligence, which uses past and present data to predict when a part of the equipment fails. operations managers can receive an earlier warning, from a few hours to a few days when a part or system needs to be repaired or replaced, allowing them to inform at right time, neither too early nor too late instead of following time-based rules (maintenance at particular intervals of time).

IIoT lets companies apply this same principle to their equipment/ machines allowing them to get the maximum use out of their assets and being proactive in preventing failures.

Predictive maintenance is usually implemented concurrently with preventive maintenance and targets both the warning signs of impending failure and the recognition of small failures that begin the chain reaction that leads to big failures

Predictive maintenance is an effective means to eliminate potential failures, ensure stable equipment operation and improve the mission reliability of manufacturing systems and the quality of products, which is the premise of intelligent manufacturing. Therefore, an integrated Predictive maintenance strategy considering product quality level and mission reliability state is proposed as intelligent manufacturing.

Predictive devices currently available are incumbent upon maintenance organizations to include the process of predictive maintenance in their maintenance programs. A total preventive and predictive maintenance program is absolutely essential to an efficient, reliable, and safe production process. Benefits like high product quality, long machine life, avoidance of work stoppage, high safety, etc. Process operators should be involved and perform daily maintenance checks. The true cost of poor maintenance which is several times initial estimates must be thoroughly understood by all and good maintenance practices must be instituted immediately to enable the facility to achieve an efficient production system that delivers high-quality goods on time, every time.

‍