Types of Maintenance

by Ferdinand K

When it comes to the operation of our plant. Surprises are never a good thing. We shouldnt be
accustomed and looked down to it. When a small issues can turn into big trouble. Before we got
serious about the predictive maintenance, its very hard to guess when issues like this might arise.
And they seems always show up at the worst possible moment. Many asset failure are caused by
unforeseen events and this make downtime cost peaking up. And when the downtime occurs, it is
not just our problem but its also problem for our customers.

We need to find a way to identify equiptment problem before they turn into productivity loss. In
other words, the monitoring of our assets continuosly is essential. Whenever the asset starts
deviating, our technician must be immediately informed an take action asap. Heres why predictive
maintenance is the good solutions:

Picture a machine. It is a quite complex machine with a lot of machnicals, penumatics and electrical
components working together. These components must have each of its Life Expectancy. This
parameters are calculated by units of Cycles, or even Hours before the components failure. This
Value of Life expectancy is unique dependings of the load, speed, environments, design and others.
We know that even 1 components is reaching failure, the whole system machine will be
compromised or even offline.

Now lets say, we do have data of life expectancy of the components from our manufactcturers, then
all we have to do is utilize it by monitoring the actual value accumulated and comapring it with life
expectancy. So we know how close each components reaching its failure state. We can, however
replace those near-failure components before its broken to save the whole machine.

Now thats a method of hybrid between Preventive and also Predictive. It is predictive because we
constanly monitor the component and have reliable accurate data. but it is not 100% predictive
because we only rely with the theoritical life expectancy data. Many of external factor can change
the life cycle of the products. If we follow those method, in some case, theres a possibility we
replace the parts that reached its theoritical life cycle and we replace it, but the relaity those parts
are still in a good condition. Otherwise, for some reason certain components are failing even though
its life cycle is not reached yet. Now thats not very effective is it?

If we talk about 100% predictive we talk about the components’s properties. Let say, if we monitor
bearing, so we have to monitor the vibration. If vibration is too high then the bearing will fail
immediately. We monitor the vibration value all the time, make a graph and when the trend is
deviating, we should get a notice thath something abnormal will happen regardless of how long the
theoritical hours or cycle are. This method, every replacement will be nearly 100% effective, and
we are wasting time checking every inch the machine rather than just look at the spesific point that
the system warn us. So minimum downtime can be achieved.

In order to become predictive, it is impossible for us the do it manually. You cannot measure and
check the condition of all components just by using your 5 senses. If you think you can, then you
must not think that these kind of data log acitivty cannot be stopped, it will last forever and also the
accuracy of data can be compromised.

Therefore we need to install “smart sensors”. Not just binary On/Off but sensors that can actually
measure data and feed it up the machine controller system. When our machine has all the data, it
can be programmed to warn us if theres any abnormalities. Basicly the machine can inform us if it
has a problem. Like patients communciating their symptomps clearly to the doctor.
Challenge is, these Predictive Maintenance system aint cheap. It cost a fortune. Imagine if the
complex machine has a 100+ componnts, and we install all sensors to that components. Not to
mention that usually, we have more than 1 machine. Multiply that. We can, of course put some
sensors in critical spot only, but it will be tricky and carefully planned to bring maximum benefit for
us.

Best solution for us who wants to begin is to do hybrid bertween preventive and predictive. But in
order to do this, we need to modify the program of the machine and also add some additional
sensors to some critical points. Normally an standard machine did not have all of this feature.