In manufacturing industry, maintenance is a routine activity
carried out to ensure that the plant continues to work efficiently and
smoothly. This is essential to ensure planned production. Any breakdown of the
plant will lead to losses in the form of loss of work in progress which were
mounted and loss of time required for repairs. Also, the planned production
schedule goes haywire creating problems down stream for the sales/ marketing
and after sales teams. It may also impinge on customer goodwill in form of
delayed deliveries and affected customer schedules.
These issues are addressed by planning the stoppage in
production in the form of scheduled maintenance activity. A scheduled shut down
allows a planned stoppage of production and hence all downstream activities can
be planned keeping the planned shut down in mind. However, the Planned
Preventive Maintenance is an expensive means of maintenance as it works more on
fear than logic. The OEM of the machinery decides, based on his design
limitations, when the plant has to be stopped for inspection. Also, based on
the designer's confidence, it decides when various components have to be
changed. The fear of failure forces the maintainer to follow the schedule and
change components based on time and running hours irrespective of whether the
component/ assembly needs to be changed or not. In effect, we end up
maintaining and inspecting a system which does not need to be maintained/
inspected and changing components that do not need to be changed at that moment
of time. Then there is the added cost of additional inspections, when not required.
Hence planned maintenance leads to additional costs.
Then we moved on to condition based maintenance. Here the
condition of the machinery is monitored closely and maintenance activities are
planned for only those components that show a need for maintenance in the form
of deteriorated performance. However, though a number of scientific techniques
are used to monitor the equipment and come to a decision on whether maintenance
is required or not, a lot of time the assessment is subjective. Fears of the assessors
play on, though in the subconscious. We can still not predict accurately when
we need to stop the plant for maintenance. Also the time period between the
prediction and the actual stoppage is short and hence the advantages of a
properly planned shut down are lost.
So, has the advances in technology placed us in a position
where we can predict the maintenance requirement with a sufficiently large
advance notice to allow a proper planned shut down? An optimised solution for
maintenance. I sure think, yes. The advances in M2M communication, data
analytic, sensor technology, cloud storage and Internet of Things (IoT) have
thrown such opportunities at us. Can we leverage them to optimise our plant
maintenance process? I think yes.
If you are interested in such maintenance related issues or
if you are a maintenance professional or if you are a part of the senior
management concerned with the operations, efficiency and hence the resultant
effect on the balance sheet, you may like to attend a workshop on "Advanced
Techniques and Technologies for Optimised Maintenance". Where do you have
such a workshop? Well, Adler Technoserve Pvt Ltd is conducting such a workshop
at Pune on 28 Mar 17. You can gather the details as well as register for the
workshop at www.adlertechnoserve.com/events.html.
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