Role of Predictive Maintenance and Monitoring in Manufacturing

Posted by Nancy on January 10th, 2020

The maintenance of equipment is critical to keep your manufacturing unit running well. On the failure of any of tools, equipment, and machines, the downtime can be very expensive for you in terms of lost production time and costs of equipment repair. Monitoring and predictive maintenance enable you to keep everything of your manufacturing business smooth.

What do you mean by predictive maintenance?

In the manufacturing industry, most of you have a maintenance schedule for every piece of machines, tools, and equipment on your production floor to make the entire process of your product production run smoothly. Suppose that any one of your machinery pieces, like punching tools fails, what could you do at that time? You will examine the reasons behind the failures and fix the problems (you come across) that can hamper your business and cause a massive loss.

Here predictive maintenance comes for your rescue. It is basically a method, which applies condition-based monitoring techniques and tools to have a close look at the equipment performance during usual operation to identify the probable defects and resolve the same before causing failures. It helps you keep the frequency of maintenance lower and protect you from having unexpected equipment repair needs.

How does it work?

Predictive maintenance implements the use of a condition-based technique to calculate the performance of the machinery asset at your production floor. The primary element in this process is the use of Iot, which makes your different machinery assets able to stay connected and work in alignment. It allows the process to share performance data to analyze and take the appropriate action.

It uses sensors to gather information and discover the machinery areas that require attention. Some instances of predictive maintenance sensors are oil analysis, vibration examination, equipment observation, and thermal imaging.

How is it distinguished from preventive maintenance?

Predictive maintenance allows you to detect the probable defects of all levels while preventive maintenance is only a practice of solving small machinery issues before they become big ones. Changing the oil in your car as per your vehicle manufacturer is preventive maintenance while monitoring the performance and detecting probable problems in advance is predictive maintenance. It takes your preventive maintenance to the next level.

Advantages of predictive maintenance and monitoring

The implementation of predictive maintenance and monitoring offers you numerous benefits that are as follows:

•  It enhances the reliability of your manufacturing plant by keeping the machinery setup maintained for smooth operation and making the same safe for your workers.
•  It prevents or decreases regular downtime, as you have a person monitoring the setup onboard.
•  No manual inspection is needed.
•  It improves workplace efficiency and productivity, along with keeping your machinery pieces running well.

Conclusion

Predictive maintenance is a crucial need for today’s manufacturing businesses. Being the next level of preventive maintenance, it helps you stay competitive in the manufacturing industry without any fear of frequent downtime and repair needs. By keeping your production unit running smoothly, it enables you to increase your productivity, safeguard your workforce and bring manufacturing reliability.