No matter the size of your manufacturing business, conducting effective maintenance on your equipment is essential. But which is the right maintenance strategy for your organization? That’s a big question, because choosing the wrong one can be costly.
There are essentially two primary options for equipment maintenance: breakdown maintenance and preventative maintenance.
Breakdown maintenance (wait until it fails)
The simplest maintenance strategy is that of ‘breakdown maintenance’. This is where assets are intentionally run until they fail or die. When breakdown occurs, reactive maintenance is performed to fix the equipment and return it to full operation. This approach is common when equipment failure doesn’t significantly affect operations or productivity.Preventative maintenance (get ahead of a problem)
The purpose of preventative maintenance is to prevent machines from breaking down by performing maintenance regularly – instead of conducting maintenance once failure has occurred. Preventative maintenance predominantly features two different types of maintenance: periodic maintenance and predictive maintenance.The implementation of a preventive maintenance program can be time consuming and costly. This creates constant debate as to whether a preventive maintenance program is worth implementing the program. Will the man hours and money invested in the program outweigh emergency repairs? Based on our experience at The UP! App working with our network of manufacturers and service techs across the country, we believe that when a preventative maintenance program is properly operated the benefits exceed the costs.
Here are our top five reasons why preventative maintenance for manufacturing equipment is worth the investment when compared to the breakdown maintenance strategy.