Industrial machines play a crucial role in several businesses and manufacturing operations. They’re responsible for creating or processing products, packaging, and materials. Companies can also use them to move or store products.
However, like other significant investments in your company, you must conduct regular industrial maintenance regularly to ensure your machine’s best condition.
To help you understand the importance of industrial maintenance better, our team will discuss what this term is and why it’s a crucial step. We’ll also discuss the different types.
What Is Industrial Maintenance?
Industrial maintenance involves conducting functional checks and servicing, repairing and replacing devices, machinery, and building infrastructure. Industrial machine operators must perform regular maintenance to reduce machine breakdowns, increase productivity, and promote overall reliability.
Why Is It Essential?
Industrial machine operators must thoroughly plan maintenance to retain the equipment’s and final product’s best quality. Initially, this maintenance measure took a lot of work for most companies. Fortunately, thanks to technological advancements, computer applications allow planners to perform their work efficiently. These applications will enable them to find the right people and resources based on the priority level and the available equipment for industrial maintenance.
Moreover, businesses must ensure their industrial maintenance processes meet safety and regulatory compliance requirements and company policies.
6 Types of Industrial Maintenance
After we discuss this performance measure and its importance, this section will enumerate the types of preventive and reactive industrial maintenance.
1. Preventive Maintenance
Also known as scheduled maintenance, this industrial procedure usually requires companies to follow a concrete plan to maintain the equipment’s best conditions. Regular inspections, cleaning, lubricating, and making the necessary adjustments allow companies to detect and correct minor problems before they escalate into more major, costly issues. Industrial companies may also perform maintenance for assets that regularly fail and replace consumables.
2. Predictive Maintenance
This industrial maintenance is a preventive measure requiring companies to constantly monitor equipment, gather data, and use the information to predict and prevent equipment failure.
However, while this industrial maintenance measure may be costly and have a steep learning curve for your employees, it’s a worthwhile investment to ensure your equipment’s best condition.
3. Proactive Maintenance
Like predictive maintenance, proactive maintenance is also a form of condition-based maintenance that emphasizes tackling the root cause of the problems to extend the machine’s life.
While predictive maintenance looks for signs of industrial failure, proactive maintenance examines oil viscosity to ensure adequate lubrication for machine parts or how to load equipment properly to avoid a problem.
4. Prescriptive Maintenance
This industrial maintenance measure identifies the condition change and provides recommendations to address the problem. For instance, if a vibration sensor detects a problem, prescriptive technologies recommend that operators slow down the machine to extend production time before the asset could fail.
5. Detective Maintenance
Detective maintenance evaluates the working assets and determines the root cause of failure if the machine breaks down. This measure tests if the device is fully-functioning, not look for signs of potential breakdowns.
After an industrial machine breaks down, companies must conduct detective maintenance to determine why and gather data for the preventive maintenance program.
6. Run-To-Failure Maintenance
On the other hand, conducting a run-to-failure maintenance routine is a planned, reactive strategy to reduce costs. Companies may select this industrial maintenance strategy for disposable, non-critical, and durable assets. They may also opt for run-to-failure maintenance for industrial machines with unpredictable failure patterns.
Conclusion
Companies must always conduct regular industrial maintenance to ensure smooth operations and boost machine productivity. You can determine which strategy works best for your equipment by identifying your needs and budget.
If you’re a business in Calgary needing professional industrial maintenance services, we can help. Emalgan Industrial Services is strongly committed to safety, quality control, innovation, and training. Contact us today to learn more!
