Routine maintenance tasks are small and simple in nature and only require basic maintenance skills to perform well. They may be completed daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. Companies that invest in routine maintenance can extend the life of their assets, reduce emergency maintenance, and keep their production lines or facilities up and running more consistently.
Routine maintenance is a type of preventive maintenance and also a key part of total productive maintenance in which machine operators perform small maintenance tasks to increase the reliability of the machines they use every day.
Routine maintenance is designed to help keep equipment, machines, and buildings operating optimally. If a particular piece of equipment needs lubrication, it may work at a slower rate and reduce the efficiency of an entire line. If dirt interferes with a certain component, an entire production line can be shut down until the problem is identified. Lubricating and cleaning equipment on a regular schedule prevents such problems.
In addition, routine maintenance can be scheduled on a daily basis, allowing a company to maximize the use of its maintenance resources. For example, if maintenance technicians move from one emergency work order to another, they may have to travel between locations, gather different tools and equipment, or simply switch mental gears from one problem to the next. A maintenance worker performing routine maintenance can clean, inspect, and adjust many items on a single piece of equipment much more quickly.
Planned Maintenance
Planned maintenance is a proactive approach to maintenance in which maintenance work is scheduled to take place on a regular basis. The type of work to be done and the frequency varies based on the equipment being maintained, and the environment in which it is operating.
The primary objective of planned maintenance is to maximize equipment performance by keeping equipment running safely for as long as possible, without that equipment deteriorating or having unplanned outages.
Planned maintenance activities include any maintenance work scheduled in advance. For example, changing the oil in a vehicle because the oil light came on is not planned maintenance. Changing the oil because the vehicle had gone 3,000 miles would be planned maintenance. Planned Maintenance is a scheduled maintenance activity, or service visit, that is done to ensure that the equipment, or equipment components, are operating correctly and within the manufacturer’s recommendations.
Planned maintenance includes preventive maintenance tasks such as checking oil levels, when those tasks are preplanned.
The schedule for planned maintenance tasks can be based on equipment running hours, number of items produced, distance traveled, or other measurable factors.
Planned Maintenance – Using Computer Systems
Since planned maintenance tasks are done on a regular schedule, they can be used to provide information to feed a computerized system that tracks maintenance needs, as well as being themselves scheduled using a computerized system. However, remember that a computer is only a place to save information and schedule tasks. It does not design your planned maintenance system nor determine how to get the work done.
Working with the production department, and at times a service representative from the manufacturer, equipment maintenance that needs to be regularly scheduled should to be identified and an appropriate schedule developed. A method for measuring the effectiveness of the planned maintenance work should also be designed so that the overall planned maintenance system, as well as the individual tasks, can be evaluated.
One of the key goals of planned maintenance is to ensure the equipment is in compliance with specifications and to proactively identify potential performance problems. The objective is to find and correct problems before they cause an unscheduled outage.
Major Benefits of Planned Maintenance
The key benefit of planned maintenance is that the work can be scheduled in ways such that it does not interfere with overall production. This may mean scheduling planned maintenance during times of the year when there is less demand, or doing maintenance at night when most of the facility is not operating.
Other direct benefits of planned maintenance include:
- Reduces unplanned equipment downtime and improves overall equipment performance.
- Repair costs are reduced because problems are fixed while they are minor.
- More efficient use of manpower and other resources because maintenance work, parts inventory, tools and financial costs, can be spread more evenly throughout the year.
- Better planning of spare parts use and ordering.
- Helping to ensure the manufacturer’s requirements for warranty compliance are met.
- Reducing overall maintenance costs.
There are also a number of secondary benefits that come from using planned maintenance. These include:
- Improved workplace safety.
- Procedures are established to plan the use of, monitor, and control maintenance resources.
- Improves the communication between maintenance and operations.
- Provides a daily plan for maintenance supervisors such that employees have a full day of work every day.
- Establishes a performance monitoring system that allows maintenance activities to be better evaluated and improved.
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