A Simple way of Maintenance.........

Preventive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance is a planned maintenance carried out in any plant and equipment before it fails. Preventive  maintenance system works on the philosophy of “Prevention is better than cure” . Means we put our effort to maintain the health of the equipment in such a manner so that it never fails while in operation. In the preventive maintenance we know the time of stoppage i.e. when we are going to take up the maintenance and secondly we know the jobs to be done and requirement of the resources. That is why this is also called Periodic Maintenance

 Preventive maintenance systems improves the reliability of any plant and equipment in operation and also avoid any major break down thus improve upon the availability of plant and equipment for operation at its full efficiency. Preventive maintenance also helps in better planning of resources and production thus ensure better service level.

Following are the main activities we perform in Preventive Maintenance:

1. Cleaning
2. Lubrication
3. Overhaul
4. Replacement
5. Function test

 Details of the preventive maintenance activities for a specific piece of equipment are obtained from the supplier’s manual, but these details may change as own experience is gained. The frequency for carrying out the activities can be based on statistical knowledge of the failure rate, of the specific plant or equipment.

This can be the experience of the supplier and, of course the experience gained at the plant over the years.

The periodic maintenance frequency can either be time based or production based.

The time based periodic maintenance is carried out in accordance with the planning calendar where the activities are listed with a fixed span of  time in between, whereas

The production based periodic maintenance is carried out when a specific amount of material has been produced or, as for rolling stock, when a specific number of kilometres of hours have been reached..

Now the latest trained in maintenance are on the philosophy “Just in time” where the machine conditions are monitored by special condition monitoring equipments and maintenance are carried out when it is essential in a planned manner. Now a day most of the plants are following this technique for better up keep of the equipment for production. This avoid unnecessary stoppage and improve the service level of the equipment. 

Prepared by : S.K.Udaiwal