The traditional approach to maintenance has been to create preventive maintenance (PM) procedures that list specific steps to be performed by a qualified person at some interval (usually calendar-based, such as quarterly). Yet research shows that many of these PM tasks lead to failures that would not otherwise have happened. The usual cause is human error, something that can be reduced through training but can’t be eliminated. Mistakes happen.
One thing you can do is assess your PM procedures for tasks that can be done less often or even eliminated. But that also puts you into a risky area because a problem that PM task prevented might now occur. You can’t just say, “We’ve never had a problem due to corroded contacts so we’ll stop cleaning and lubricating them.” That task is why you didn’t have the problem.
You can often eliminate measuring tasks from your PM procedures by installing monitors. For example, instead of having the tech take vibration readings quarterly, you install a vibration monitor that takes those readings continuously. Instead of having a tech remove a panel cover to measure voltages, install a voltage display that is wired to those same measurement points.
But the real gold mine is predictive maintenance (PdM). You make adjustments not based on intervals but based on predictions made from equipment condition.
