4 Maintenance Management Tips to Avoid Equipment Failure

If the risk is managed successfully, the business can survive. However, if the risk is not managed, the business will not survive. This is why it is better to avoid risk, and business organizations should pay attention to their assets and their condition. If these assets are not taken care of properly, equipment failure will occur.

To avoid equipment failure, below we have mentioned maintenance management tips.

Maintenance Management Tips

1. Regular Inspection

This is one of the most important maintenance management tips. All equipment shall be inspected thoroughly, whether assets & equipment are small or huge. All machines have their importance for daily operation. Without them, the operation will not be completed.

During operation, if the machine stops working, then the whole business operation will suffer. Hence, the inspection shall be regular so that if any issue is found, an alternative solution shall be implemented.

When upkeeping is done regularly, equipment machine reliability improves. There should be proper scheduling for inspection so that productivity does not suffer. In clear words, a few assets shall be queued for inspection every week (as per worker's availability).

2. Monitor Equipment Continuously

This concept is simple but complex when executed. Assets and equipment are monitored continuously to watch the performance and operating conditions. If assets' performance is not up to the mark, then maintenance is scheduled.

Continuous monitoring helps in creating a baseline so that a good performing asset and non-performing asset can be identified with this baseline. This type of key performance indicator helps the organization in estimating asset performance.

The key performance indicators & monitoring also help the team in finding the root cause for stress, whether it is because of the long continuous working of a machine or some other reason. After that, work is adjusted so that the machine-stress is reduced.

3. Avoid Too Much/Less Maintenance

One of the Major Issues of an Organization Is That They Provide Either Too Much Maintenance or Too Little Maintenance, but the Key Is Maintaining the Balance Between These Two Situations.

Let's see what happens when you give very limited maintenance:

1. Increased equipment failure chances
2. Decreased equipment efficiency
3. Downtime increased
4. Asset life decreases
5. Too much maintenance charges

Let's see what happens when too much maintenance is done:

1. Workers time wasted
2. Unnecessary wastage of inventory
3. Under-utilization of asset
4. Expenses increases
5. Overall productivity suffers

Regular maintenance is the key to keep your asset and equipment in the best condition and to avoid equipment failure as well. Below results can be seen when maintenance is given on time:

1. Equipment life increases
2. Productivity increases
3. Equipment performance optimization
4. Avoids sudden equipment failure
5. Downtime minimized

4. Invest in Maintenance Management Software

A medium or large size organization has a lot of assets and managing them can be a very difficult task. Managing them manually will be an impossible task. One cannot know which assets need maintenance, which needs to be sent for inspection, which assets are not working, what actions were taken while performing maintenance!

You can get answers to all the above questions with maintenance management software. One can keep track of all the maintenance activities with the software. It alerts you which assets need maintenance via mail, SMS, and notification.

It works on the philosophy of “just set it and forget it,” meaning that if you have set a periodic event, it will notify you when it occurs and reoccur every time and stop notifying once this period is over. It can be the best and most effective maintenance management tip.

What Are the Benefits of Maintenance Management Software?

Below we have mentioned the benefits of maintenance management software:

This software increases productivity and increases teamwork collaboration because it centralizes data. Furthermore, this software keeps maintenance history which helps in finding equipment issues quickly.

When maintenance is provided on time, asset life is prolonged, and you can know which asset is in which life phase or when it needs to be disposed of.

This software provides reports and statistics about asset maintenance. How many assets, machines, and equipment are there in total? Which equipment is most utilized? How assets are performing individually? Reports help make a decision based on data.

With this software, you will always know the asset location. Big organizations always have these types of issues where the location of asset and equipment are unknown, this affects business badly because when the asset is required it is not available so productivity kills. When machines are tracked, then it decreases chances of theft and misplacement.

What Maintenance Strategy Can Be Used to Avoid Equipment Failure?

There are several maintenance strategies that can be used to avoid equipment failure:

Proactive Maintenance.

This maintenance can be categorized into predictive maintenance, Preventive maintenance. Proactive maintenance eliminates all the potential issues of machines so that no equipment failure or issue can occur. Moreover, proactive maintenance results in increased asset life.

According to Statista, “it is expected that the global predictive maintenance market will reach around 23.5 billion U.S. dollars by 2024. The market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of almost 40 percent between 2018 and 2024.”

Reactive Maintenance

There are other maintenance strategies as well such as reactive maintenance, this strategy is used when equipment failure has occurred now it needs to be brought back into running condition. For this type of maintenance, emergency maintenance is used. Most of the time the priority is high for equipment maintenance.

Conclusion

For keeping assets in the best shape and to avoid equipment failure, the above maintenance management tips can be very useful. But the most important tip is investing in maintenance management software or Helpdesk and Ticketing software. Implementing any of the software can make a difference. Undoubtedly, it will be very beneficial for your organization. This software eliminates the usage of spreadsheets and makes the process automated.

After all, machines are made up of parts and they are prone to failure. Employees can make mistakes. But this software minimizes the risk and adds stability to your organization. This software can be a ticket to an error-free future for your organization.

Frequently Asked Question (FAQs)

1. What are the different types of maintenance?

Maintenance can be divided into 2 parts:

1. Proactive maintenance - Different types of maintenance are preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance, condition-based maintenance, corrective maintenance.

2. Reactive maintenance - It contains maintenance such as emergency maintenance & runs to failure maintenance.

2. How does the maintenance team know when to perform maintenance?

There are various triggers through which the maintenance team knows such as 1. when equipment failure occurs 2. Condition-based 3. Event-based 4. Time-based 5. Use-based

3. What is the need for management software in an organization?

For managing and monitoring maintenance of equipment. Asset maintenance management is a never-ending process for improving, enhancing performance & prolonging asset life.