While preventive maintenance procedures long dominated the way in which manufacturers approached their equipment, predictive maintenance innovations have proven some of the glaring drawbacks associated with preventive maintenance. With more and more advancements to maintenance technology also finding their way into the industry, preventive maintenance strategies have been put into question. For example, preventive maintenance occurs regardless of the condition of a part or piece of equipment and can extend to part replacements when not needed. Over the long term, this can equate to a lower-value use of resources and can lead to higher inventory costs as parts are discarded before they need to be. Similarly, preventive maintenance does not eliminate the chance of equipment failure, since it does not inherently involve active monitoring of equipment performance and condition. This can offset the predictable nature of a preventive maintenance framework, since resources will inevitably need to be directed to remediate equipment failures and other unforeseen maintenance issues. When this is the case, equipment downtime can occur which is one of the costliest scenarios for manufacturers, offsetting the ‘low overhead’ associated with a preventive maintenance strategy. It’s clear that times are changing in the manufacturing industry when it comes to equipment health and maintenance technology. For more information on this topic and how the industry is evolving, continue reading on to the infographic coupled alongside this post.
Low Or No Maintenance Industrial Machinery provided by FLEXIM, an organization offering exceptional products such as their steam flowmeters
