Maintenance, 4 types of Maintenance, Breakdown Maintenance, Preventive maintenance

April 29, 2020July 9, 2021 Sukanta Maiti 13 Comments

Today, in modern industries, it is very important to keep the machines and equipment always ready to use. So that there is no interruption occurs during the production.

The maintenance division of the factory ensures the availability of machines and equipment to perform their function at optimum conditions.

What you are going to learn?

What is Maintenance?

Industrial maintenance is the process of maintaining machines and equipment in a factory. With the development of special-purpose machine and equipment, it cost a lot more money so their idle time and downtime becoming a lot more expensive day by day. Therefore, it is important that plant machinery and equipment should be properly maintained.

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The objective of plant maintenance :

The maintenance division of the factory ensures the availability of machines and equipment to perform their function at optimum conditions.

The objective of the plant maintenance division is to achieve minimum breakdown and to keep the plant in excellent condition at the lowest possible cost.

Kept the plant in such condition that, it should run without any interruption.

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Importance of maintenance department :

Depending upon the size of the maintenance department and type of production, it has a wide variety of duties.

The maintenance department plays an important role in production because plant breakdown creates problems such as time loss, Rescheduling of production, temporary work shortages, need for overtime, inefficient productivity, etc.

If a piece of equipment goes out of service in a flow production plant, the whole line soon comes in a halt. It results in a loss of productivity.

The maintenance engineer inspects the plant, determines necessary changes to be made, and reports to the plant manager.

The maintenance department involves alterations and improvement in existing equipment and building to minimize breakdown.

Plant Maintenance image — Maintenance (image – Pixabay)

Types of Maintenance

Maintenance can be classified into 4 categories –

Corrective breakdown maintenance,
Scheduled maintenance,
Preventive maintenance,
Predictive maintenance.

1. Corrective or Breakdown maintenance :

In Corrective or Breakdown maintenance repairs are made after the equipment is out of order and it can not perform its normal function.

In that case, the maintenance department comes into action and makes necessary repairs after checking. They do not attend to the equipment until another breakdown occurs.

Breakdown leads to poor maintenance, excessive delays in production, more spoilt material, and profit loss.

This type of maintenance is justified for small plants, where they do not feel financial justification for scheduled techniques Corrective or Breakdown maintenance needs few records and a small staff.

2. Scheduled maintenance :

Breakdown maintenance can’t be applied in the maintenance of cranes, lifts, hoists, and pressure vassals. Scheduled maintenance must be applied in such a condition.

The scheduled maintenance department inspects equipment early and makes necessary changes to avoid breakdown. Scheduled maintenance incorporates, inspection, lubrication, and repair of certain equipment.

An example of the scheduled maintenance occurring at repeating intervals is changing a bearing on a conveyor belt every 30 days or inspecting the condition of a motor after every 90 days. Scheduled maintenance can take the form of a one-time work order.

If a problem with a piece of equipment or part is identified, a time is scheduled to check and repair the equipment.

The goals of the scheduled maintenance are to reduce reactive maintenance, equipment failure, and maintenance backlog. Standard checks help to increase the lifetime of equipment and reduce the number of equipment repairs and replacements. The scheduled tasks also allow you to better allocate resources in a cost-effective and efficient manner.

Maintenance image — Maintenance (image- Pixabay )

3. Preventive maintenance :

In preventive maintenance locates weak spots like bearing, part under excessive vibration, pressure vessel, etc which needs regular inspection and minimal repair thereby reducing the danger of breakdown.

Preventive maintenance involves periodic inspection of components and corrects them in such conditions while they are still in the minor stage. To make plant equipment always ready for use and achieve maximum production.

When it is suitable for preventive maintenance?

Have a critical operational function is running continuously
Have failure modes that must be prevented with regular maintenance
Have a piece of equipment which likelihood of failure that increases with time or use

4. Predictive maintenance :

It is newer maintenance technique uses human senses or sensing instrument such as Audio gauge to sense machine sound, Vibration analyzer for checking vibration, Amplitude meter, thermometer, pressure gauge, etc, to predict trouble before breakdown.

In predictive maintenance, equipment conditions are measured periodically to take timely action such as equipment adjustment, repair, or overhaul.

Predictive maintenance increases the lifetime of the equipment. The objective of predictive maintenance is the ability to first predict when equipment failure could occur, followed by preventing the failure through regular and timely scheduled and corrective maintenance.

Before establishing the predictive maintenance program within a factory, an organization must take several steps, which include:

Analyzing the need and failure history of the equipment
Reviewing all available records on downtime, defected equipment, losses (yield and energy), potential regulatory fines and workplace safety
Establishing definitions and concepts as well as building a case for predictive maintenance
Educating major stakeholders about the technique and getting buy-in
Completing an equipment inventory and evaluative the current equipment conditions
Selecting equipment for the program of initial implementation
Developing system details based on individual systems and components
Evaluating any existing preventive or predictive maintenance data
Deciding which systems to include and what to inspect for
Defining the program’s criticality and establishing predictive maintenance frequency and schedule type
Evaluating the anticipated resources and assigning maintenance worker’s roles and responsibilities.