How to Create a Predictive Maintenance Program

Now that’s really getting cold, I’m going to turn to uses of infrared thermography that will keep me inside and warm instead of up on a roof doing a moisture survey using thermography! In all seriousness, many of my clients use infrared thermography as part of their preventative and predictive maintenance programs.

Of course, maintenance programs aren’t “one size fits all”. Each predictive maintenance program should be developed based on your facility's size, equipment, regulations, and your productivity goals. So how do you create a predictive maintenance program?

First, it’s important to understand what some of the most common predictive maintenance methods are. Reactive maintenance is the kind of program that depends on you doing absolutely nothing. You run it til it fails or breaks. Remember that knock in your car engine? You have two choices – keep running it til the engine fails completely (mega car repair bill and lots of downtime!) or take it in to get it fixed. Letting your car engine fail when all it needed was regular oil changes is the equivalent of Reactive Maintenance.

Preventive Maintenance (PM) is when you create a schedule and perform maintenance repairs on your equipment whether it “needs it” or not. The schedule is based on either a specific amount of calendar time or machine run time. This is cheaper than reactive maintenance, but you still need personnel and a large inventory.

What this series is about is Predictive Maintenance (PdM). This means you track indicators over time to predict when equipment needs repair. An effective predictive maintenance program measures equipment on a regular basis, tracks those measurements, and then takes corrective action when measurements are about to go outside the equipment operating limits. This option is the most cost-effective method, but it does require some commitment on your part in order to effectively track performance.

Infrared surveys are particularly important for electrical equipment because failure of electrical equipment usually translates into critical mission failure. And, as you are aware, certain kinds of electrical failures pose life-threatening risks to workers.

Interested in learning more? Give me a call at 803-3328-2889 and let’s talk!

IR Infrared Services provides top quality thermographic service at a competitive price to commercial and residential end users in North Carolina and South Carolina. For more information, visit www.irinfraredservices.com or follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/infraredscans. We are proud to offer the very best thermography services in North and South Carolina!

This article series was developed using ideas from http://www.plantservices.com/articles/2009/124.html?page=full and http://www.myflukestore.com/crm_uploads/part_one_of_a_predictive_maintenace_series.pdf  for source material.