Equipment and machinery is the lifeblood of your industrial operations. So when it doesn’t work properly, it affects your productivity and bottom line.
To avoid unexpected shutdowns and slow-downs, experts recommend scheduled preventative maintenance. At ONJ Services, we provide industrial machinery maintenance across Melbourne to ensure smooth operations for businesses. Here’s how you can make an effective preventative maintenance schedule for your equipment:
Types of Preventative Maintenance Schedules
Fixed Preventative Maintenance
In this type, you schedule maintenance sessions for a specific time. This is regardless of when the last maintenance took place. Even if the last preventative maintenance was completed earlier or later, the next session will take place at the same time.
Floating Preventative Maintenance
In this type, maintenance is scheduled based on the last time the machine or equipment was serviced.
Making A Preventative Maintenance Schedule
Take Inventory
The first step is to take inventory of all equipment that needs routine maintenance. Remember that not all your equipment needs regular maintenance. When considering whether to add a specific machine to the inventory, ask the following questions:
- Is it necessary for successful operations?
- Does it have failure modes that can be prevented with preventative maintenance?
- Is it more likely to fail with passing time?
If the answer to any of these questions is ‘yes,’ add the equipment to your inventory. When taking inventory for assets, document data like its serial number, model, location, and spare parts with its maintenance history.
Prioritise Assets by Maintenance Needs
Determine which assets are most important for operations and have the highest maintenance requirements. You should focus on critical assets that are prone to failure and have higher repair costs.
Determine Suitable Maintenance Intervals
We mentioned earlier how some machines need different maintenance intervals. Some perform best with a fixed maintenance schedule, while a floating schedule suits other assets.
To avoid over-inspecting your assets, use data from the asset’s maintenance history and manufacturer’s recommendations to set an appropriate interval.
Determine Maintenance Tasks
Make a list of inspection, servicing, and other tasks required for each asset in your inventory. These tasks should be based on previous maintenance history and manufacturer recommendations.
Rank Maintenance Tasks
Rank the different maintenance tasks according to their priority. This ranking should be based on factors like safety risks and operational importance. It’s how you’ll know what tasks to do first.
Assign Responsibilities
Designate maintenance tasks and inspections to specific employees or teams. Assign responsibilities based on their skill levels and experience. Keep in mind that you might encounter some scheduling constraints when designating tasks. We recommend hiring expert industrial electricians for machinery maintenance in Melbourne.
Monitor The Schedule
Lastly, you should monitor the schedule and make changes where necessary. Make sure all assets receive maintenance according to the schedule you prepared.
Then, assess the assets’ failure frequency since you implemented the schedule. If the machine is still failing, you’ll have to adjust the schedule.
Experts recommend tracking these metrics to know if changes are needed:
Mean Time Between Failure, or MTBF for short, details the average time between breakdowns for machines. If your PM schedule is effective, the MTBF should increase.
Scheduled Maintenance Critical Percent, or SMPC for short, tells you how late a maintenance task is compared to its due date. If more assets are receiving maintenance later than their due date, it means that you don’t have enough team members on board.
Overall Equipment Effectiveness, or OEE, tracks how effectively your machines are working. This metric takes the asset’s quality and performance into account.
Hire Experts For Industrial Machinery Maintenance in Melbourne
To prepare an effective preventative maintenance schedule, you need to take several steps and monitor the schedule’s effectiveness. If you’ve never prepared one before, this can be a time-consuming process. To save time and resources, let our team at ONJ Services prepare your preventative maintenance schedule.
We’re expert industrial electricians with years of experience in providing maintenance services for industrial equipment. Having repaired and serviced several brands and models of industrial machines, we can prepare an efficient PM schedule that meets your needs. Contact us today for a free quote.