It’s no surprise that every company’s maintenance needs will differ in some way. Knowing this, it makes sense that every company will have their own unique maintenance strategy that plays to their organization’s strengths. A majority of companies’ strategies for maintenance are typically split between predictive or preventive maintenance to ensure the health and longevity of their equipment, such as forklift battery repair for those that use them. Throughout this post, the differences between these two strategies will be detailed and analyzed.
It’s best to start with the most long-standing maintenance strategy of the two: preventive maintenance. This maintenance approach is predicated on regular maintenance intervals for all pieces of equipment throughout the calendar year. Typically these intervals are established based on a few key characteristics of the machinery in an organization’s fleet. Age and run time are the most important aspects to assess when considering what the regular maintenance intervals should be for your organization. In most instances, the machines that are oldest and have the most run time, will require more maintenance throughout the year than those newer machines with far less run time.
The much more advanced maintenance strategy, however, is predictive maintenance. This strategy uses real-time data collection from each piece of equipment in an organization’s fleet in order to determine the most optimal maintenance schedule. This is accomplished through the link to the Internet of Things from each piece of equipment. These systems can collect and analyze performance and external data unique to the machine to diagnose an issue and recommend the best fix. With the help of predictive maintenance, businesses can improve uptime and save money by identifying potential system failures and addressing problems before they become severe. This maintenance type could be considered much more efficient than its counterpart.
However, if you’re looking to keep the cost low, you can only go so far with tech. Machines that are run by humans also need to be maintained by humans. Nate Hillis, who runs Mesa Home Painters & Hillis Brothers Painting has to keep track of equipment in multiple different states. Nate keeps his home painting contractors in different states on schedule by tasking them with owning specific maintenance systems.
While the costs associated with this maintenance strategy might be higher than most organizations can stomach, what has become increasingly easier is implementing these systems into an organization’s operation. Largely in part due to more and more organizations opting into this strategy, and thus expanding the IoT’s capabilities as mentioned previously. The more organizations that utilize this strategy, the more intuitive the insights that these systems can provide to organizations. If you’re hoping to improve efficiency through a decrease in unexpected downtime, predictive maintenance is definitely your best bet.
However, as with anything that seems to be a sure thing, simply integrating these predictive maintenance systems into your organization is not a foolproof way to improve your organization. In fact, integrating these systems mean even more change for your employees to keep up with. Re-training long-lasting personnel with a completely different outlook on maintenance is bound to be a challenge. Not only this, new employees with next to no knowledge regarding these systems wouldn’t be able to latch on to an existing employee to learn the ropes while these systems are so fresh. If your organization has the available capital and the utmost trust in your employees, with enough dedication these systems can prove beneficial.
For more information on the right maintenance strategy for your business, be sure to review the accompanying infographic. Courtesy of Industrial Service Solutions.
