What is Preventive Maintenance?
Preventive Maintenance is planned maintenance of a plant and its equipment that is designed to improve equipment life and avoid any unplanned maintenance activity. Preventive maintenance includes painting, lubrication, cleaning, adjusting, and minor component replacement to extend the life of equipment and facilities. Its purpose is to minimize breakdowns and excessive depreciation. Neither equipment nor facilities should be allowed to go to the breaking point. In its simplest form, Preventive Maintenance can be compared to the service schedule for an automobile.
Preventative Maintenance Service
- Shaft and Coupling Alignment
- Vibration
- Conveyor Adjustment
- Retrofit and Relocation of Equipment
- Lubrication
- Laser Alignment
“United Parcel Service (UPS), has entrusted Industrial Rigging Service with their P.M. needs for over 15 years.”
Reasons for Preventive Maintenance
- Increased Automation
- Business loss due to production delays
- Reduction of insurance inventories
- Production of a higher quality product
- Just-in-time manufacturing
- Reduction in equipment redundancies
- Cell Dependencies
- Minimize energy consumption (5% less)
- Need for a more organized, planned environment
Why Have a P.M. (Preventive Maintenance) Program
The most important reason for a P.M. program is reduced costs as seen in these many ways:
- Reduced production downtime, resulting in fewer machine breakdowns.
- Better conservation of assets and increased life expectancy of assets, thereby eliminating premature replacement of machinery and equipment.
- Reduced overtime costs and more economical use of maintenance workers due to working on a scheduled basis instead of a crash basis to repair breakdowns.
- Timely, routine repairs circumvent fewer large-scale repairs.
- Reduced cost of repairs by reducing secondary failures. When parts fail in service, they usually damage other parts.
- Reduced product rejects, rework, and scrap due to better overall equipment condition.
- Identification of equipment with excessive maintenance costs, indicating the need for corrective maintenance, operator training, or replacement of obsolete equipment.
- Improved safety and quality conditions.
The amount of preventive maintenance needed at a facility varies greatly. It can range from a walk through inspection of a client’s facilities and equipment, noting deficiencies for later correction, to computers that actually shut down equipment after a certain number of hours or a certain number of units produced, etc.
As maintenance managers face the problems of keeping their plants running, while at the same time lowering their direct and indirect labor costs, many have recognized the cost effectiveness of P.M. contracts with Industrial Rigging Service of Austin, Inc. Our experienced personnel have established long-term relationships working with maintenance supervisors and mechanics in developing programs; which prolong the operating life of equipment and reduce downtime.
Even with a regular P.M. program, occasionally downtime occurs. When your operation is down due to weld failure, stress cracking or structural fatigue, call I.R.S. Our certified welders will be at your plant promptly to make repairs. We will also perform diagnostic testing to recommend ways to prevent the problem from reoccurring.