One of the most difficult things to accomplish as a business owner or manager is determining the most optimal maintenance strategy. For a majority of businesses, sticking to the most basic preventive maintenance strategies is often most common. When businesses go against the grain, they invest in predictive maintenance systems for a more tailored maintenance approach. Before making a decision between the two, it’s imperative to understand the details of both.
Preventive maintenance is perhaps the simplest approach to maintenance that an organization can take. This approach prioritizes performing routine maintenance on each piece of equipment at scheduled time intervals throughout the year. The intervals will vary between each piece of equipment based on features such as age or run time. A much more complex approach comes from predictive maintenance. In these strategies, organizations employ sophisticated systems that connect with their equipment to collect data that would indicate when they require maintenance. While these systems are excellent at determining what is making a piece of equipment tick, they are much more costly than just going with the grain.
Being aware of the major differences between these two strategies is only half the battle. Making the decision between which of these is more beneficial for your organization is much more difficult. Luckily, with the accompanying resource coupled with this post, making that decision can be a bit simpler. The resource will detail ways in which each approach can benefit organizations, as well as ways in which these organizations can avoid running their equipment to failure.
A majority of organizations may stumble when making the decision even still, largely in part due to the uncertainty of predictive maintenance strategies. The largest worry tends to come from how these systems would integrate with their equipment, however, this should be the least of every organizations’ worries. In fact, as more and more companies opt-in to predictive maintenance, the better these systems become. More machines means more data, which means the data and analysis that is reported to organizations can become more and more accurate. Leading to even less downtime and increased efficiency.
Surely nothing could match the capabilities of these systems, right? Except most businesses won’t ever be able to reach them as their barrier to entry is much too high. Cost will ultimately be what holds businesses back from investing in these systems, but even those with deep enough pockets will still experience some trouble. Employees will require rigorous retraining to master these new systems. Managers will have to be able to work alongside such new technologically advanced systems as well, while still providing the same value to their employees. While the investment will pay for itself, it will require a great deal of patience to truly prosper.
For more information regarding preventive and predictive maintenance, be sure to review the infographic accompanying this post. Courtesy of Industrial Service Solutions.