Using Preventive Maintenance to Track and Reduce Downtime

Using Preventive Maintenance to Track and Reduce Downtime

Competition is fierce in manufacturing today, and downtime can be a costly nightmare. Whether you're producing automotive parts, packaging consumer goods, or managing a fleet of vehicles, downtime means lost revenue, reduced productivity, and damaged customer relationships. In order to reduce downtime, businesses must find ways to measure it and implement both preventive and predictive maintenance strategies.

What is downtime?

When we talk about downtime, we’re referring to any period of time when a piece of equipment, production line, or entire system is not functioning as it should. This includes both planned and unplanned downtime.

Planned downtime is scheduled in advance for maintenance, upgrades, or other expected activities. Even though it is anticipated, planned downtime still needs to be carefully managed to minimize its impact on overall productivity.

Unplanned downtime is much more damaging to an organization because it occurs unexpectedly. It can be caused by equipment failures, breakdowns, or other unforeseen events, causing immediate disruptions and financial losses. 

While planned downtime takes an asset offline, it should not affect other production processes or staffing. Unplanned downtime, on the other hand, may have a domino effect, causing a bottleneck in a production process or resulting in line workers with nothing to do, increasing the losses associated with it.

Tracking Downtime

As the old saying goes, “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.” The first step in increasing uptime is to track downtime. Fortunately, many different technologies and tools exist today to help businesses do that effectively.

First, manufacturers must implement a system to collect accurate data. Information such as when downtime occurred, how long it lasted, and what the root causes actually were are critical to quality measurements. Computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) can serve as a repository of data if technicians are properly trained to enter information. In addition, many companies can benefit from using Internet of Things (IoT) sensors that can automate data collection.

Second, an organization needs to have an effective way to generate downtime reports and perform data analysis so recurring patterns can be identified. These reports can direct maintenance teams to specific machines that seem more prone to downtime or particular tasks that seem to be consistently delayed.

Implementing Preventive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance is a proactive approach that works to prevent equipment failures and reduce unplanned downtime. Each business needs to consider which aspects of preventive maintenance will generate the highest return on investment and prioritize accordingly. Here are some potential preventive maintenance components to consider:

• Asset Management: Create a comprehensive asset list and categorize each asset by its criticality to your operations. For example, certain machines may be central to meeting production deadlines while others do not play such an important role. Prioritizing your preventive maintenance efforts on high-criticality assets first should reduce downtime the most.

• Maintenance Scheduling: Develop a maintenance schedule based on manufacturer recommendations, industry best practices, and your historical downtime data. For instance, if you notice that bearings for a particular asset tend to fail every 10 months, you may want to schedule replacement every eight to nine months to avoid that breakdown.

• Predictive Maintenance: Sensor technology has come a long way in recent years. Now, sensors can track vibration, temperature, water levels, humidity and more on a near-constant basis. In addition, many can be programmed to send automatic alerts when performance falls out of an acceptable range, indicating an impending failure. By using these technologies to monitor the condition of your machines, you can “catch” potential failures just in time.

• Spare Parts Inventory: Carrying the correct amount of spare parts can be a tricky component of preventive maintenance. Holding too much inventory can result in higher costs to track and store items as well as waste if items expire or become outdated. Holding too little inventory, on the other hand, can mean additional downtime or expedited shipping costs when an asset needs repair. Tracking data such as which spare parts are critical, may require a longer lead time, or are expected to be needed in the near future can help.

• Training and Skills Development: Be sure your technicians are not only trained to diagnose issues quickly and correctly but also to record data properly for future analysis and maintenance work. This can require a cultural shift, instilling the importance of having everyone work together to ensure accurate and complete information is available. 

• Root Cause Analysis: Whenever downtime does inevitably occur, conduct a thorough root cause analysis, especially on your most critical assets. Fixing only the immediate problem will only delay more permanent and long-term repairs, which will increase costs, problems, and frustrations for all. Work to identify the underlying issues and implement corrective actions to prevent future occurrences.

• Continuous Improvement: Like any successful program, it’s critical to regularly review and refine your preventive maintenance program. Take the time to consider lessons learned from downtime incidents, root cause research, and other past incidents to make improvements in both technology and workflow processes to do better in the future.

Conclusion

Downtime is perhaps one of the most costly problems that a manufacturer can face. Although some downtime is inevitable, shifting as much of that to planned downtime versus unplanned events can make a significant difference to the bottom line.

By tracking downtime through accurate and complete data collection alongside implementing a robust preventive maintenance program, organizations can reduce unplanned interruptions, improve equipment reliability, and ultimately maximize uptime of critical assets. In the end, that level of improved operational efficiency means lower costs, less frustration, greater profits, and happier customers.