Machinery Maintenance: Definition and Types

machinery maintenance

Machinery maintenance is work done to keep mechanical assets in their best running condition with lower downtime.

Maintenance can be done before a failure happens or after its occurrence. It may include routine checks, scheduled service, and emergency and scheduled repairs. The work also replaces or realigns machinery parts that are worn, misaligned, or damaged.

It is crucial for any facility that makes use of mechanical assets to perform maintenance. It aids organizations to meet their production schedule while minimizing expensive downtimes and lowering the danger of workplace injuries and accidents.

Different Types of Machinery Maintenance

Below are some of the most common types of machinery maintenance. Each comes with its own pros and cons. They could be mixed and matched to develop a stable upkeep program.

Routine Maintenance

Routine maintenance involves basic maintenance responsibilities like checking, testing, lubricating, and changing worn or damaged machine parts on a planned or ongoing basis.

Reactive Maintenance

It refers to maintenances done when machinery has already reached a disaster. It is unplanned, unexpected, and often leads to rushed and emergency repairs; it is usually called “fighting fires.”

Run to Fail Maintenance

This type of maintenance is very comparable to reactive maintenance. It includes letting a piece of machine run until such breaks down. But, run to fail is a cautious choice, while reactive maintenance is otherwise. A plan is to make sure that parts, as well as labor, are accessible to get the asset up and running or be replaced immediately.

Corrective Maintenance

It is a type of work that gets the assets back to their proper working order. However, it is most generally related to smaller and non-invasive responsibilities that fix a problem before failure. For instance, realigning a specific part during an inspection.

Preventive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance is any regularly arranged machine upkeep to identify glitches and repair them before a failure. It can be divided into two major types: Time-based preventive upkeep and usage-based preventive maintenance.

Time-based maintenance is responsibilities scheduled at a given time interval, like the last day of each month or every 15 days.

Usage-based maintenance is when the work is arranged based on equipment operation, like after 15 production cycles or 500 miles.

Condition-Based Maintenance

This one is dependent on monitoring actual asset conditions to perform upkeep when there is evidence of reduced function or forthcoming failure. The evidence could be attained through performance data, inspection, or scheduled tests and could be gathered regularly or uninterruptedly through internal sensors.

Predictive Maintenance

Predictive maintenance uses tools and sensors to gauge machinery performance. This allows the identification of possible problems so they could be modified before failure happens.

Prescriptive Maintenance

Prescriptive maintenance systematizes the maintenance procedure through artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. With this strategy, sensors track machinery performance in real-time and use AI to tell you what upkeep work should be done and when.

It is important to note that it should be appropriately done regardless of the type of maintenance. This will guarantee the work’s efficiency and avoid any unexpected problem.