Reasons why predictive maintenance technicians are your plant's heroes

Let me introduce you to the team of predictive maintenance technicians. We are the silent service branch of the maintenance department. Although we believe everyone has heard of us, many have not noticed our presence, and only a few really understand our capabilities and functions within the operations department. We are the proactive maintenance and reliability team.

 We work on a different schedule than the maintenance department. Production and maintenance must both “compete” for time spent on the equipment. Only one can have the machine at a time, as indicated by a carefully organised schedule. The predictive maintenance activities, On the other hand, they are non-invasive. 

Predictive maintenance technicians collect vibration data on machinery at the same time operators have the equipment running. We analyse the graphical data of the vibration pattern of the equipment to diagnose the condition of the machine. 

The vast majority of equipment failures occur slowly and without warning over several months. Predictive maintenance technicians continue to assess the condition of the machinery and, when it degrades beyond a moderate level of failure, we enter a work requirement into the planner well in advance of the impending failure. This gives him enough time to order spare parts, plan, schedule, and complete the necessary maintenance repairs, all in a calm manner, before anyone in production even knows they have a problem.

Because predictive maintenance technicians are not in the crosshairs of major disasters, they often assume that their daily work does not add the most value to operations and their efforts could be directed to other, more important repairs and emergencies.

By contrast, consider this analogy: The predictive maintenance technicians are the silent lightning rods that protect equipment from danger, and the technicians on duty are the emergency medical technicians and fire service technicians who would quickly respond at a moment's notice, with lights flashing and sirens blaring.

When they arrive at the production area, there is trouble, there has been a lightning strike and everything is on fire. They are recognised on a daily basis for providing the valuable service of putting out the fire, reviving the hearts of the victims. They get everything back to normal, and everyone is grateful for a job well done.

The on-call technicians are seen as the heroes of the town while the team of predictive maintenance technicians is often seen as the expensive monthly insurance bill that is left in the mailbox. Both teams do a great job keeping production going, but from one point of view, it is unquestionably better to prevent a lightning strike than to go through the physical and emotional trauma of having your house destroyed by lightning and repaired, only to repeat the process over and over again for multiple strikes.

 The cost and associated protection of the lightning arrester is negligible compared to the cost of not having one and experiencing a single strike. Wouldn't it be better to be proactive and install a lightning arrester on every machine, rather than being reactive by building and manning a rescue station at every production unit?

From the day a lightning rod is installed, it does its job reliably and safely every day, even if it easily looks as if it is doing nothing. When the predictive maintenance technicians do their job effectively, The improved reliability of the equipment increases production availability.

In addition, long-term maintenance costs are reduced, as are forced downtime, improved planning, and systematic design of equipment failure identification through root cause failure analysis methods.

If you are interested in finding out more reasons why predictive maintenance technicians are needed in your facility and how to achieve important results, we invite you to subscribe to our NewsletterThe newsletter will provide you with the best practices to achieve positive results within your plant.