Preventive Maintenance (PM) Optimization:
Control Plant Maintenance; Don’t Let It Control You
Preventive maintenance (PM) is a perpetual “underachiever” in the quest for asset reliability. Like the Owner’s Manual for a truck or car, PM says, “Do this on such and such a schedule without fail.” This method was an acceptable sole solution before the days of computer modeling and sophisticated data analysis, but today, there are better approaches that combine PM with other types of asset management that increases overall equipment effectiveness.
Companies that engage only in preventive maintenance almost always have outdated processes in place―if they have any at all. Many also do not effectively track their PM activities, which causes them to be performed too often or too little. One is just as bad as the other because equipment failure and shortened life can be as much a function of too much maintenance as not enough.
True preventative maintenance requires ongoing condition monitoring, the use of a maintenance planner and a comprehensive failure analysis and reliability strategy to better understand when each piece of equipment requires repair or maintenance.
Through Asset Reliability Optimization, Performance Consulting Associates (PCA) help enterprises properly plan for and schedule PM activities. After the situational and gap analysis is complete, our consultants:
- Develop a Master Maintenance Schedule of repetitive tasks and establish/modify preventive routines. We supply basic PM templates to illustrate and support the proactive asset care process.
- Set up the firm’s Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) or computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software for accurate tracking and begin collecting and analyzing data for continuous optimization.
By leveraging CMMS systems, PCA empowers operations and maintenance personnel to conduct scheduled maintenance at precisely the right time, thereby eliminating wasteful upkeep processes while also avoiding potentially detrimental deferred maintenance.