How to Implement Smart Maintenance and Preventive Maintenance Strategies

What Is Smart Maintenance Management?

Maintenance management refers to an organization or company’s approach to maintaining its critical assets and facilities. It involves how a team manages resources to ensure that maintenance takes place optimally and production is as effective and efficient as possible.

An effective maintenance management strategy will often involve a good combination of preventive maintenance and reactive maintenance.

Smart Maintenance, meanwhile, is related to smart manufacturing, which is a cornerstone of Internet 4.0. Smart manufacturing involves using the Internet of Things to create smart factories that carry out “smart manufacturing.” Smart, in this case, refers to the use of data collected by Internet of Things (IoT) smart sensors to shape and organize the manufacturing process.

The Internet of Things is changing many processes, from manufacturing to facility management, and maintenance isn’t left out. Smart maintenance involves using the predictive analytics afforded by IoT sensors to manage your maintenance processes.

Smart Maintenance: How it Works

Predictive maintenance is at the heart of a smart approach to asset management. With a typical preventive maintenance plan, maintenance tasks are completed routinely. The principle is to address minor problems before they lead to asset or equipment failure.

While a preventive maintenance program is the best approach, it isn’t always easy to execute. Yes, you want to prevent breakdowns and reduce unplanned downtime.

However, when resources are scarce, teams can find themselves wondering if they can spare the time and funds to do weekly oil changes on pieces of equipment that are working just fine. Predictive maintenance thus aims to restrict equipment maintenance activities to only the most vital by predicting when they are actually needed.

Instead of a simple, time-based maintenance schedule, maintenance teams will use predictive analytics to forecast when assets will likely fail and then perform maintenance work just before. When done right, this can optimize efforts and resources.

Smart Maintenance and Preventive Maintenance Management in Action

Smart Maintenance optimizes preventive maintenance through condition-based maintenance. Condition-based maintenance is one of the major types of preventive maintenance. This form of maintenance works by condition monitoring.

This means paying close attention to the physical conditions of assets: how they work and changes in performance or state. Smart sensors are an effective way to do this.

First, technicians equip assets with AI (artificial intelligence) monitoring equipment to collect asset performance data. This equipment includes vibration analysis equipment, ultrasonic technology, and infrared thermography cameras. The sensor data is then collated in a central monitoring system.

The next step involves analyzing the data using algorithms. This analysis detects any patterns or trends indicating potential equipment failure.

For example, temperatures or vibrational levels above a set limit may indicate that an asset is reaching critical usage. In such an event, the system will notify maintenance technicians. Maintenance software such as a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) is an excellent way to automate these notifications.

Why Should You Try Smart Maintenance?

Let’s look at a few of the benefits of this approach.

Lowers Maintenance Costs

Like all preventive maintenance forms, a smart predictive maintenance approach can help you lower your maintenance costs. First, fixing more minor problems before they develop into larger ones is often cheaper.

Replacing small spare parts before they break can save you the stress of replacing an entire machine when the damage snowballs. Also, because you’re addressing problems beforehand, you can apply more lasting and thorough solutions than in an emergency when focusing on a short-term maintenance solution.

In addition to both, predictive maintenance saves money by reducing waste. Instead of expending your maintenance resources on maintenance for all your assets simultaneously, predictive maintenance ensures you’re not just following a schedule filled with unnecessary actions. You’ll narrow your maintenance down to the essentials.

Increases Accuracy of Maintenance Efforts

Smart data often makes you more precise with your maintenance activities. When a sensor notifies you about changes in the physical properties of certain asset parts, you have a more precise sense of what is going wrong and how to address it. This ensures that you direct your maintenance efforts exactly where they are needed.

Increases Production Output

Smart preventive maintenance helps ensure that you lose fewer productive hours to unplanned downtime. Even in the case of a predicted failure, you can plan your downtime and ensure your workers spend their hours optimally.

Such an approach is preferable to waiting for an asset to fail and then trying to figure out what went wrong before beginning the work to get it back in service. This approach increases your uptime, making your assets and staff available for more of the actual production work.

Improves KPIs

Predictive maintenance can help improve key performance indicators (KPIs) related to equipment reliability and availability. Some of these KPIs include asset performance metrics like:

• MTBF: This stands for Mean Time Between Failure and refers to the amount of time it takes before asset failure occurs.
• MTTR: Mean Time to Repair, which measures the average amount of time it takes your maintenance team to repair a broken-down asset.
• OEE: Overall Equipment Effectiveness. This is a measure of the overall facility performance, taking into consideration equipment performance efficiency, availability, and product quality.

How Can a CMMS Help Your Smart Maintenance?

Using a CMMS software solution to optimize your smart maintenance and work order management can benefit your company in the following ways.

Manages Your Data

A good CMMS system will often come with data storage and tracking features. MaintainX, for example, allows you to collect, store, and track your work order data and automate your inventory management. You can even analyze your maintenance data with reporting dashboards and generate valuable insights. You can’t have a smart factory without smart data.

Automates Your Maintenance Operations

Instead of creating maintenance schedules with pen-and-paper, you can create and assign digital work orders with maintenance management software. In line with the principles of preventive maintenance, you don’t have to wait for assets to fail to do so.  You can run your facility maintenance by creating repeatable maintenance work orders in advance.

Creates Standard Operating Procedures

To ensure your maintenance processes are effective, you need to standardize them. A cloud-based CMMS solution like MaintainX is an excellent tool for creating SOPs as, in addition to work order automation, you can attach work instructions, templates, and checklists for maintenance staff to follow.

Optimize Your Smart Maintenance with MaintainX

MaintainX CMMS is designed to help streamline your workflows. Create and assign work orders, centralize your data storage, and get real-time updates from your shop floor. MaintainX also provides robust reporting features that allow you to analyze your data and generate actionable insights into your business. Take your maintenance strategy to the next level with MaintainX today!