Equipment Maintenance

Implementing an equipment maintenance strategy has reduced equipment failures and increased the lifespan of critical assets for thousands of organizations. Your guide to a successful equipment maintenance plan is below—give it a read!

What is equipment maintenance?

Equipment maintenance is any upkeep performed on a facility’s critical assets, equipment, and heavy machinery. It covers everything from corrective repairs to preventive maintenance and inspections.

Maintenance managers aim to keep all equipment—from construction equipment to production machinery and everything in between—in good operating condition with proper care and maintenance.

Objectives of equipment maintenance

There are four main objectives of equipment maintenance.

1. Cut maintenance costs

According to Forbes, the average manufacturer incurs 800 hours of equipment downtime each year, costing as much as $50 billion annually. By enhancing machinery performance and lifespan, costly repairs decrease. Investing in your equipment is an investment in your company’s success.

2. Protect equipment and lengthen lifespans

Performing routine maintenance and maintenance service on your critical assets keeps them in tip-top shape, improving their short-term performance and ultimately extending lifespans.

3. Reduce unplanned downtime

Ensuring that equipment receives proper maintenance reduces equipment downtime. Equipment failure is inevitable, but you can virtually eliminate it with an effective preventive maintenance program and predictive maintenance systems.

Proactively planned maintenance allows you to plan regular maintenance and inspection at times outside of your equipment’s typical operating hours. This keeps equipment availability and reliability high.

4. Increase safety

Equipment less prone to sudden failure or other issues is safer for your technicians. Properly servicing your equipment leads to fewer incidents and safety hazards.

Industries that use equipment maintenance

Any industry using machinery can benefit from equipment maintenance. Some of the primary industries include:

  • Manufacturing
  • Construction
  • Food production
  • Hospitality (restaurants, hotels, etc.)
  • Sporting arenas
  • Mining
  • Oil and gas
  • Aerospace

These, amongst a variety of other industries, rely on heavy equipment daily. An unexpected breakdown will drastically impact their business, which is not true amongst all industries.

Types of equipment maintenance

There are several maintenance strategies that maintenance managers adopt to properly maintain their equipment. The best facilities utilize a mix of these three maintenance types, ideally 80% proactive (preventive and predictive) and 20% corrective (reactive).

types of equipment maintenance: first, reactive: failure-based (too late). second, proactive. proactive consists of preventive, time-based or meter-based (too early); and predictive, condition-based (just in time)

Reactive maintenance

Reactive maintenance, also known as corrective maintenance, is prompted after an equipment failure, and a repair is needed to restore functionality.

Reactive equipment repair is typically the most costly and time-consuming maintenance activity. Although equipment failures are inevitable, reducing equipment failure—and therefore the need for reactive maintenance—as much as possible is best for facility operations.

Preventive maintenance

Preventive maintenance, or preventative maintenance, refers to any planned maintenance task that prevents future equipment failure. Most preventive care is triggered after a period of time (e.g., every month) or a machine has met a particular meter trigger (e.g., hours run or widgets produced).

This maintenance style allows for the creation of a scheduled maintenance plan. This maintenance strategy is an excellent next stepping stone if you currently operate with a reactive mindset.

Predictive maintenance

Predictive maintenance is similar to preventive maintenance in that it aims to solve equipment problems proactively. However, instead of scheduling maintenance based on time or meter readings, predictive maintenance relies on the asset’s condition to prompt maintenance. Predictive maintenance looks for changes in equipment performance and triggers alarms when it appears that equipment is likely to fail. This type of maintenance is highly efficient, only prompting maintenance when necessary.

Learn about other maintenance management styles.

How to establish an equipment maintenance program

Equipment maintenance brings a host of positive outcomes when implemented properly, but proper implementation can be tricky. Follow these best practices to ensure you’re on track to get the most out of your equipment maintenance plan.

1. Choose a system to support your plan

There are several ways to track, manage, and schedule routine maintenance. Here is a glimpse into four different methods.

Pen & paper: Pen and paper maintenance request systems rely on printed forms to plan, schedule, and document maintenance. A single printed form documents the entire maintenance process. The maintenance manager schedules equipment maintenance on a paper calendar and informs technicians of their daily tasks.

Whiteboard: Whiteboard maintenance request systems are similar to pen and paper. The process starts with a maintenance manager filling out a paper form to plan and schedule maintenance for equipment. When it comes time to perform maintenance, the maintenance manager organizes the information on a whiteboard where tasks and assigned technicians are visible to all team members.

Excel: Using Excel or Google Sheets to manage equipment maintenance gives all team members access to maintenance requests, assigned technicians, and pertinent details in one forum. Going digital can boost organization, but allowing too many people to have access and editing power to the document can result in lost data and forgotten equipment requests.

Equipment maintenance software: Equipment maintenance software is the most comprehensive equipment maintenance management system. The software completely automates all aspects of maintenance activity, from scheduling maintenance to assigning tasks to documenting historic equipment repair. Learn more about equipment maintenance software.

2. Inventory your equipment

It’s important to input all of your equipment into the system you’ve chosen to manage your maintenance. Be sure to include the following details:

  • Original equipment manufacturer (OEM) recommendations: Often, OEMs give guidance on optimal equipment care and suggestions for preventive maintenance.
    Maintenance history: A detailed account of past breakdowns found through downtime tracking software or maintenance logs for your equipment can guide you in determining the optimal time to perform preventive maintenance.

This information will help you create appropriate machinery maintenance schedules and work orders.

3. Select an appropriate maintenance strategy for your equipment

As mentioned earlier, there are a variety of maintenance strategies to apply to your equipment. Equipment pertinent to your business’s success should follow a well-established preventive maintenance schedule or a predictive maintenance strategy. Some equipment, however, may be best to run to failure based on the cost and effort of performing regular maintenance. Use equipment histories and OEM recommendations collected in step two of this process to guide your decisions.

4. Establish equipment maintenance schedules

This is the most crucial step of the process as the equipment maintenance schedule controls how frequently to service the equipment, how to service the equipment, and by whom. Let’s take a look at each of these components in more detail.

How frequently to service equipment: You can get a reasonably good understanding of how often to perform preventive maintenance on your equipment based on OEM recommendations and your equipment’s maintenance history. How frequently is your equipment breaking? How much time elapses between breakdowns? Schedule preventive maintenance frequently enough to stave off breakdowns but not too often to waste time and resources.

Who should service the equipment: You need to plan for which technicians will service each piece of equipment. Take a look at their skillsets, abilities, and schedules and assign the most appropriate technician to an equipment item for regular maintenance.

How to service the equipment: The OEM recommendations will likely give guidance for maintaining the equipment. Using this and the knowledge you and your team have from working in the field, create checklists and inspection lists for the team to follow every time they service the equipment. Watch the video below to see how one company integrates checklists into its preventive maintenance schedule.

5. Train your team

An equipment maintenance program is essentially useless if your team doesn’t know how to follow the plan.

First, thoroughly train your team on how to use the system you’ve chosen to track your maintenance. They should understand how to submit a request, resolve it, and track any issues throughout the process.

From here, make sure each technician understands how to service the equipment. Don’t just give them the checklist and expect them to figure it out. Walk them through the first few inspections or services to ensure they understand how to maintain the equipment properly.

Equipment maintenance certifications and training

There are several opportunities for those looking to craft their equipment maintenance skillset. Let’s take a look at a few.

Maintenance Master Certification Program: The six-module program provides hands-on training with local manufacturers to help you understand how to care for equipment. From discussing overall equipment effectiveness to using root cause analysis to uncover issues, this course gives you the inside scoop into equipment maintenance.

The Certified Maintenance and Reliability Professional (CRMP) Program: The CMRP program is accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and provides a broader certification. The focus of the program is on five pillars:

  1. Business and management
  2. Equipment reliability
  3. Manufacturing process reliability
  4. Organization and leadership
  5. Work management

How equipment maintenance software can help

equipment maintenance software: assets, equipment, calendaring, reporting capabilities

Asset and equipment maintenance software is an excellent tool for simplifying proactive maintenance tasks and organizing all aspects of the work order process in one central hub. With this software in place, you can schedule maintenance on a digital calendar that automatically assigns available technicians, sends alerts and reminders, and notifies you of any spare parts needed to perform the maintenance. It will even tell you how many spare parts you have left on hand.

Asset and equipment maintenance software can also be a database for important equipment maintenance documents such as maintenance checklists, detailed service histories, specific instructions for repair, and anything else pertinent to your facility.

Conclusion

Regardless of how you decide to implement an equipment maintenance plan and system, taking care of your assets is sure to reflect positively on your facility.

Keeping your equipment healthy and increasing their lifespans will boost facility productivity, reduce unnecessary costs, and make your job as a maintenance manager much more manageable.

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