If your maintenance department had more resources than it could ever use and production never worried about how long a repair takes, performing a PM as part of every repair would be a good idea. But if these two conditions aren’t met, is it a bad idea?
That depends on what’s being repaired.
Let’s say your insulation resistance testing program indicated that several feeder cables supplying critical production equipment must be replaced as soon as the work can be scheduled. Production has a window for this work later this week, but the repair time is greater than the window permits. If you skip performing “as-installed” insulation resistance testing (after all, these are new cables), you can restore equipment to service that much sooner.
But these are critical feeders. What you lose:
- Baseline data. You can’t start that all-important trend until the next scheduled IR tests (maybe a year or more).
- Catching damage done during installation, which could mean unplanned shutdown.
Another option is to schedule the testing for the near future, rather than making them part of the repair. It’s a judgment call.
