The Importance of Industrial Maintenance Processes
Implementing the appropriate industrial maintenance processes is paramount to achieving minimal downtimes, increased reliability, reduced energy usage, reduced repairs and optimised efficiencies. By taking care of these aspects through routine and effective maintenance strategies, manufacturers can ensure reduced costs (and therefore increased profits), increased uptime potential and greater product quality and durability (and therefore customer satisfaction).
The industrial maintenance processes discussed in this article can be implemented across a wide range of industries, including:
Key Industrial Maintenance Processes
Industrial maintenance processes can be split into 4 main categories, which we explore here:
Preventive Maintenance
Preventive maintenance consists of actions taken to mitigate potential causes of failure before they occur.
Preventive maintenance tasks include:
Lubrication
Lubrication is an essential task that makes all equipment and machinery run smoother and more efficiently. Through using high-quality lubricants, manufacturers can ensure:
- Reduced friction between moving parts
- Higher efficiencies
- Longer equipment lifetime
- Corrosion protection
- Reduced requirement for repairs and maintenance – saving costs
Cleaning and surface preparation
It’s important that all working surfaces are kept clean and free of dust and incontaminants. This is essential when preparing bonding surfaces for adhesive bonding, as well as general cleaning using low-lint wipes. This ensures that dust particles don’t get built up in-between substrates and intricate machinery parts, preventing the slowing down and eventual failure of the machine.
Routine check-ups
Routine machine check-ups can prevent failure by ensuring everything is working in order. These tasks include mechanical, electrical, hydraulic and pneumatic performance checks.
Corrective Maintenance
Corrective maintenance consists of actions taken after a failure has occurred in order to bring the system back to a healthy state.
Corrective maintenance tasks include:
Using adhesives and sealants for repairs
Adhesives and sealants can be of great importance when performing corrective maintenance tasks. In particular, fast-curing adhesives, such as many offered by Huntsman Araldite, can be applied with minimal surface preparation and cure quickly, allowing repairs as soon as possible.
Adhesives provide unique advantages as compared to traditional bonding mechanisms, including lightweighting, improved aesthetics, resistance to temperature, chemicals and corrosion, and time and cost savings.
Re-lubrication
Sometimes, machinery parts fail as a result of their lubricants having dried up. This can be solved reactively by re-lubricating the respective parts. In addition, the requirement for re-lubrication can be avoided by using high-quality lubricants, such as those offered by Krytox, that provide life-long lubrication.
Predictive Maintenance
Predictive maintenance consists of actions taken to accurately track an equipment’s performance and state, in order to predict when a failure might occur, so that it can be stopped beforehand.
Predictive maintenance tasks include:
Using Internet-of-Things
Through the use of Internet-of-Things and Industry 4.0, manufacturers can utilise smart devices, maintenance softwares and data-tracking solutions to assess the performance of equipment. Through analysis of this data, potential points of failure can be detected and avoided long before they actually happen.
Predictive maintenance has been utilised in smart agriculture applications through the use of the Internet-of-Things.
Reliability-Centred Maintenance
Reliability-centred maintenance consists of figuring out the best possible maintenance strategy for a piece of equipment based on all the parameters around it.
Reliability-centred maintenance tasks include:
Computerised Maintenance Models
Similar to predictive maintenance, Internet-of-Things can be utilised here to assess the criticality of an asset alongside potential causes of failure and corrective actions. From this, resources can be efficiently allocated where required, providing a tailor-made solution to potential problems.
Reliability-centred maintenance is utilised in smart cities by gathering and analysing data from many systems simultaneously.
