UNDERSTANDING PREVENTATIVE MAINTENANCE - Scotts Global Ltd

UNDERSTANDING PREVENTATIVE MAINTENANCE

Preventive maintenance is undeniably a critical competent to any maintenance strategy. It is key to lowering maintenance costs, reducing equipment downtime, improving asset lifespan and efficiency, and increasing workplace safety.

In Trinidad and Tobago, 80% of companies have experienced an unexpected outage in the last three years because of poor maintenance strategies.  Having a clear, well defined, and consistent maintenance plan is crucial for the long-term success of any business.

Preventive maintenance is crucial to any business looking to reduce maintenance costs and the number of reactive maintenance issues it addresses annually.

Preventative maintenance allows you to stay ahead of issues before they arise.

What Is Preventive Maintenance?

Preventive maintenance involves taking the necessary precautions and actions to prevent accidents or equipment failures from occurring before they happen. Performing equipment inspections, cleaning and lubricating essential equipment parts, are examples of preventive maintenance.

The goal of preventive maintenance is to prevent equipment failure before it occurs, and to reduce the risk of accidents. Ultimately, taking certain precautions to ensure minimal risk to your air conditioning equipment means that you can focus on improving your operations, instead of having to constantly repair broken equipment.

Preventative maintenance is not reactive (i.e. a response to a problem, malfunctioning equipment, technology, etc.).

Types of Preventive Maintenance

Here are some of the most common different types of preventative maintenance:

Time-based maintenance

It is essential to create a monthly or annual maintenance schedule that complies with manufacturer recommendations for inspecting and cleaning your air conditioning equipment. Even outside of these recommendations, you should keep in mind that the most essential equipment to your business should be checked regularly to ensure the best possible operations.

Usage-based maintenance

If your business uses certain air conditioning equipment every single day, it’s a good idea to track usage (i.e. operating hours). This is referred to as usage-based maintenance.

If certain rooms are used more frequently than others or if certain areas of the building are subjected to harsher environmental factors, then these areas may require more frequent maintenance.

Predictive maintenance

Predictive maintenance relies on sensors to capture information about equipment (i.e. temperature sensors, or vibration sensors). It entails monitoring the condition of essential machinery to track performance and to detect possible defects that could result in a system crash.

Prescriptive maintenance

Similar to the patterns that predictive maintenance analyzes, prescriptive maintenance uses advanced analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to generate predictions about maintenance, and also act on them. What does this mean? Basically, prescriptive maintenance makes recommendations to improve system operations, and also follows up to produce a work orders and oversees the entire process.

Benefits of Preventive Maintenance

Of course, one of the most obvious benefit of implementing preventive maintenance is that you’re more likely to stay ahead of problems before they occur. Preventative maintenance:

• Will decrease business downtime and closures due to unexpected equipment failures;

• Preventive maintenance will increase equipment life expectancy, so you’ll spend fewer dollars in the long run.
• Preventive maintenance will ensure all equipment and employees work only during scheduled hours, eliminating the need for paying overtime due to unexpected machinery breakdowns, etc.
• Preventive maintenance will significantly reduce safety risks for employees and customers, thereby reducing the costly risk of lawsuits and workers’ comp.
• Preventive maintenance means less energy consumption for your assets and equipment due to high levels of operational efficiency, which will reduce your utility bills.

These are only a few of the specific benefits that accompany regular preventive maintenance. Even if you are a small retail business and don’t have large air conditioning equipment, preventive maintenance as it applies to your business will go a long way toward reducing costly accidents and damage.