Outlined below are the more widely used maintenance management strategies, as well as their pros and cons and situations when they are best applied. Typically we see plants employing either run-to-failure (only fix after a breakdown) or preventive maintenance (opens in new tab) (on a predetermined schedule). However, depending on the value of the asset or its criticality in the plant’s operations, we may see this strategy escalated to predictive or even RCM-based maintenance.
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In run-to-failure maintenance, assets are deliberately allowed to operate until they break down, at which point maintenance is performed. No maintenance is performed before then. A plan is in place ahead of failure, so the asset can be fixed without causing production issues.
Advantages of run-to-failure maintenance include:
Disadvantages of run-to-failure maintenance include:
Use when the total cost of repairs after breakdown is less than the cost of performing maintenance beforehand. Use for redundant, non-critical assets that pose no safety risks. Equipment is fixed until it costs less to replace it.
Requires an understanding of how an asset might break and consequences. An example is the plan for a light bulb. The bulb operates until failure and is then fixed.
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Preventive maintenance is maintenance regularly performed on an asset to reduce the likelihood of it failing. It is performed while the asset is still working so that it doesn’t break unexpectedly. It is scheduled on a time or usage based trigger.
Advantages of preventive maintenance include:
Disadvantages of preventive maintenance include:
Preventive maintenance should be used on assets that have a critical operational function, failure modes that can be prevented with regular maintenance and have a likelihood of failure that increases with time or use. An example of this strategy is scheduling maintenance for a conveyor belt on the first Monday of every month or after every 500 hours of operation.
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Predictive maintenance aims to predict when asset failure might occur and prevents the failure by scheduling maintenance. It keeps maintenance frequency low and reliability high. Possible failure is identified with monitoring equipment linked to software or through visual inspections.
Advantages of predictive maintenance include:
Disadvantages of predictive maintenance include:
Use predictive maintenance on assets that have a critical operational function and that have failure modes that can be cost-effectively predicted with regular monitoring. An example includes being able to monitor if a conveyor belt drops below a certain speed, which will trigger a work order.
Find, analyze, and plan for failure in all your assets with this FMEA template (opens in new tab)
Reliability centred maintenance is an in-depth, highly involved process that seeks to analyze all the possible failure modes for each piece of equipment, and customize a maintenance strategy for each individual machine.
The advantages of implementing reliability centred maintenance include:
Disadvantages of reliability centred maintenance include:
Reliability centred maintenance should be used on critical assets with identifiable failure modes that affect system function and can be controlled. It should be used after mastering other maintenance strategies and when facilities can invest required time, money and resources to implement.
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