PM Contract

Is Preventive Maintenance Necessary?

Reliability Centered Maintenance has changed the way we think about Preventive Maintenance (PM). It has caused some to question whether it is even necessary to do preventive maintenance. The truth is most manufacturing & laboratory facilities would benefit from a good preventive maintenance program. It would be especially beneficial for those plants & labs that rely on breakdown or run-to-failure maintenance.

What is Preventive Maintenance?

Preventive maintenance is planned maintenance of plant/laboratory and equipment that is designed to improve equipment life and avoid any unplanned maintenance activity. PM includes painting, lubrication, cleaning, adjusting, and minor component replacement to extend the life of equipment and facilities. Its purpose is to minimize breakdowns and excessive depreciation. Neither equipment nor facilities should be allowed to go to the breaking point. In its simplest form, preventive maintenance can be compared to the service schedule for an automobile.

Many reasons exist for establishing a PM program. Listed below are a few of these. Whenever any of these reasons are present, a PM program is likely needed.

Reasons for Preventive Maintenance

Increased Automation running time
Business loss due to output production delays
Reduction of insurance inventories
Production of a higher quality output
Just-in-time manufacturing/reporting
Reduction in equipment redundancies
Cell dependencies
Minimize energy consumption (5% less)
Need for a more organized, planned environment

Why Have a PM Program

The most important reason for a PM program is reduced costs as seen in these many ways:

Reduced production downtime, translating into lower economy lost.
Better conservation of assets and increased life expectancy of assets, thereby eliminating premature replacement of machinery and equipment.
Reduced overtime costs and more economical use of maintenance workers due to working on a scheduled basis instead of a crash basis to repair breakdowns.
Timely, routine repairs circumvent fewer large-scale repairs.
Reduced cost of repairs by reducing secondary failures. When parts fail in service, they usually damage other parts.
Reduced output rejects, rework, and scrap due to better overall equipment condition.
Identification of equipment with excessive maintenance costs, indicating the need for corrective maintenance, operator training, or replacement of obsolete equipment.
Improved safety and quality conditions.

If it cannot be shown that a preventive maintenance program will reduce costs, there is probably no good reason other than safety to have a PM program.

The Law of PM Programs: There are many advantages for having a good preventive maintenance program. The advantages apply to every kind and size of facilities. The law of PM programs is that the higher the value of facilities assets and equipment per square foot of plant, the greater will be the return on a PM program. For instance, downtime in an automobile plant assembly line at one time cost $10,000 per minute. Relating this to lost production time an automobile manufacturer reported that the establishment of a PM program in their 16 assembly plants reduced downtime from 300 hours per year to 25 hours per year. With results such as this no well-managed plant can afford not to develop a PM program.

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