Preventative maintenance is essential to a multitude of applications and industries, including industrial manufacturing. These measures enable companies to extend asset lifetimes, boost productivity, prevent equipment damage, reduce downtime, and maximize profits, and they don’t have to be expensive to be effective.
Gary Guess, Product Portfolio Manager, and Joe Reed, Product Director, RS
At its core, preventative maintenance is a relatively simple concept. Nearly every manufacturer has sound strategies in place to react to equipment malfunctions or disruptions. But preventative maintenance measures allow operators to correct the root issues before real problems occur, sparing manufacturers from losses related to unplanned equipment downtime and safety hazards.
Early preventative maintenance measures were often limited to manual equipment monitoring. In these instances, an employee was tasked with ensuring that all the equipment elements appeared to be in good working order. Manual monitoring was far from foolproof, as many equipment malfunctions can’t be easily anticipated with the naked eye, but it was far better than making no effort at all.
Today’s engineers can leverage machine learning, operational data analytics, predictive asset health monitoring, and other advanced tools to create unprecedently detailed and nearly infallible systems. Modern preventative maintenance measures enable companies to extend asset lifetimes, boost productivity, prevent equipment damage, reduce downtime, maximize profits, and comply with equipment warranties.
However, the best part is that these advanced preventative maintenance solutions don’t have to be expensive to be effective. Believing that the best preventative maintenance solutions are reserved for companies with the largest budgets is an easy mistake to make. After all, it’s true that some solutions do require large investments. But more expensive doesn’t necessarily mean better. RS can identify the solutions that best fit your company budget, industry, and equipment or process, no matter what they may be.
Preventative Maintenance Measures
In recent years, preventative maintenance has become an umbrella term to describe a variety of different solutions that can be distilled into four basic categories.
Usage-Based Preventative Maintenance – This approach refers to tasks triggered by how assets are used and considers factors extending from average daily employment and asset exposure to environmental conditions. Engineers use the information collected to proactively schedule actions including due dates for future inspections and maintenance tasks.
Calendar/Time-based Preventative Maintenance – This approach involves scheduling tasks based strictly on calendar intervals. As due dates approach, engineers submit the necessary work orders to ensure that the actions are performed within the predetermined timeframe.
Predictive Maintenance – This approach refers to any steps taken to provide corrective maintenance before a failure occurs. It typically involves continuous monitoring equipment capable of analyzing assets in real-time and identifying early signs of required maintenance. Operators use this data to schedule maintenance before a failure occurs and when the impacts of the downtime and production losses associated with taking a machine offline are at their lowest.
Prescriptive Maintenance – This approach is an extension of preventative maintenance. Prescriptive maintenance equipment not only identifies what will fail and when but also why, and that critical piece of information helps analyze and identify different options and potential outcomes to mitigate any risk to the operation.
Preventative Maintenance Benefits
Reduced Equipment Downtime. It doesn’t take an experienced engineer to realize that any form of preventative maintenance will elicit benefits ranging from reducing maintenance requirements and extending asset lifetimes to boosting productivity and mitigating unplanned downtime. However, the full extent of these benefits is not as apparent as one may think — especially now that Industry 4.0, which refers to the revolution elicited by increasing interconnectivity and smart automation, is well represented on factory floors. Consider, for example, the effects of Industry 4.0 preventative maintenance on downtime.
Preventative maintenance solutions reduce downtime due to systems being in a proactive state. It’s what they’re designed to do. But soon, as Industry 4.0 technologies like sensors continue to evolve, machines will be able to recognize when assets aren’t operating at peak efficiency and proactively order replacement parts. In the future, we won’t be talking about reducing downtime; we’ll be talking about eliminating downtime.
The mitigation or elimination of unplanned downtime alone can save thousands of dollars per hour. In fact, McKinsey & Company reported that the use of a sophisticated predictive maintenance solution allowed one leading offshore oil & gas operator to realize a 20% average reduction in downtime and production increases equivalent to an additional 500,000 barrels per year.
Improved Staffing Efficiencies. The reduced human involvement required by modern preventative maintenance systems can have a positive effect on staffing efficiencies. In the “2022 State of Industrial Maintenance Report” issued by Advanced Technology Services (ATS) in partnership with Plant Engineering Magazine, 57% of survey respondents from across the manufacturing industry said that people-related issues such as hiring, training, and culture are the most challenging factors affecting the efficiency and efficacy of their organization’s maintenance programs. Additionally, 52% said that the lack of skills among current staff is the primary reason for outsourcing maintenance, 39% stated that too many special skills are required, and 37% said there was a lack of time and manpower to dedicate to maintenance.
In an environment where demand for goods is at an all-time high and skilled labor is in decline, the added expense of component failures that halt a machine mid-production can significantly impact your bottom line, as can labor costs from unreliable manual inspections — and especially if they’re outsourced.
By minimizing the highly skilled human resources needed to maintain sound maintenance solutions, organizations can alleviate several significant burdens at once, including the burden of hiring and paying more for skilled repair workers in a competitive labor pool, the burden of continually training in-house talent, and the burden of allowing the extended downtimes that lesser skilled technicians need to complete maintenance tasks.
Implementing Preventative Maintenance Solutions
New technology always comes with new costs, and preventative maintenance technologies are no exception. But the vast majority of businesses don’t need to dive headfirst into large-scale or cutting-edge preventative maintenance investments — at least not all at once — and the most effective solutions aren’t necessarily the most expensive options. In fact, there’s no guarantee that even a significant investment will achieve the desired results, at least not without thorough analysis and careful, deliberate planning.
As Industry 4.0 technologies continue to proliferate on factory floors, keep in mind that preventative maintenance solutions aren’t just for manufacturing applications. Anywhere there’s industrial networking, there’s a place for preventative maintenance. Even small upgrades, such as placing condition monitoring sensors on critical equipment, will lay the foundation for a data-driven ecosystem that engineers can leverage to form long-term strategic maintenance plans.
Investing in sensors is a great way for engineers to begin approaching equipment maintenance with a more preventative, data-driven mindset. Two of the most common types of sensors employed in preventative maintenance applications and available through RS are vibration sensors and temperature sensors.
Vibration Sensors – Steady vibrations caused by equipment operation, nearby machines, or even shipping can eventually result in equipment damage. Over time, vibration can reduce bearing lifetimes, misalign drive shafts, loosen drive belts, and greatly reduce the expected lifespan of individual components. Vibration monitoring sensors placed on or inside of equipment can alert operators to early warning signs that something is amiss and allow them to take corrective action before the equipment failures occur. Vibration analysis can help give your facility an advantage in preventing unplanned downtime and reducing maintenance costs.
Temperature Sensors – Temperature sensors monitor critical machine components or auxiliary systems to detect changes in machine conditions. Thermocouples and resistive temperature detectors are used for direct measurement applications and non-contact infrared sensors are often used for indirect measurement applications. Typical applications for temperature sensors include boilers, bearings, HVAC systems, electrical systems, IT systems, and solar energy systems.
Sensors, however, are far from the only effective, economical solutions that organizations can implement at that beginning of their preventative maintenance journey. There are several other additions and upgrades that can gradually create a system capable of delivering on the promise of Industry 4.0. A few such options include:
Industrial Data Communication Systems – These systems are responsible for the information running over wires or through the air in industrial environments like factories and can provide real-time data about the status of connected equipment and processes. Solutions are commonly comprised of products including Ethernet switches, routers, conditioners, transmitters, and receivers.
Mechanical Power Transmission Products – Effective preventative maintenance solutions can be as simple as having necessary replacement components on hand, since doing so eliminates downtime that would otherwise have been spent purchasing products and waiting for deliveries. Mechanical transmission products are ideal for this approach because they all have a set lifespan. Having on-hand stocks of motors, couplings, bearings, bushings, sprockets, gears, chains, pulleys, belts, brakes, and clutches can significantly improve operational efficiencies.
Lubricants, Greases, and Oils and Protective Coatings – Industrial equipment and the many moving parts that enable these machines, including bearings, wheels, and motors, all need lubrication to remain in good working order. But each of these hundreds to thousands of pieces of equipment on your average factory floor is on its own lubrication schedule and often demands a specific lubricant, so it can be easy to skip over or skimp on this routine maintenance task. However, the costs of doing so can be crippling since failures resulting from improper lubrication can cause unexpected shutdowns and early wear and tear, increase maintenance costs, or even require expensive equipment replacements. In fact, according to Machinery Lubrication magazine, as many as 40% of bearing failures can be tied to just poor lubrication. So, the importance of this small but frequent preventative maintenance task cannot be overstated.
RS, A One-Stop Shop for Preventative Maintenance Solutions
RS offers more than 10,000 products from some of the world’s leading preventative maintenance suppliers, including 3M, Siemens, Belden, Advantech, MG Chemicals, Omron, and our own private label, RS PRO. And our highly experienced sales team can help you find effective end-to-end solutions that satisfy your unique needs and budget.
We are also proud to offer customers the use of our Virtual Demo Lab, which is an innovative platform that allows RS engineers to demonstrate A/B product testing in customer-specific applications and share live videos and other content. For customers that feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of options available for their specific needs and want to feel confident that they’re making the best purchasing decision, the demo lab can be an invaluable resource.
Remember, preventative maintenance goes far beyond industrial manufacturing. Applications including oil & gas, medical & pharmaceutical, military & aerospace, transportation, and integrated supply systems all depend on sound preventative maintenance solutions to maintain optimal productivity and workplace safety.
For assistance identifying and deploying preventative maintenance solutions that can help extend your asset lifetimes, boost productivity, prevent equipment damage, reduce downtime, and maximize profits, please contact your local RS representative at 1.866.433.5722 or reach out to our technical support team.
