Preventive Maintenance to Keep on Productivity

While working hard physically, a stage comes when the person gets tired indicative of a situation that his/her physical resources are falling short of the demand or some of his/her body’s parts are worn-out partially and need to be taken care of through some nutrition and rest. During the rest period, the worn-out body parts get repaired and his/her physical resources get recuperated to make the person energetic enough to resume working.

Even during normal working, some cells of the body keep on wearing out gradually. During sleeping time, the mind of the person rejuvenates the weakened/damaged cells of the body to make the person fit for the next working day. If this process is allowed to work well through adequate nutrition intake and sleeping hours, there won’t normally be any weakness in the body and hence no decrement in capacity of working, except for ageing effect.

The two types of body’s functioning described above are respectively called breakdown repairs and preventive maintenance. These two types of rejuvenations are applicable to machinery also that remain busy in production activities and hence are important aspects of industrial management.

When a machine is over-worked with respect to its normal capacity, it is not lubricated, and its worn-out components not replaced in time, a situation comes when the machinery stops functioning with some of its parts damaged. Such a machine needs repairs before coming back to normal functioning. This causes a great loss to productivity of persons associated with the machinery and hence that of the organization they are working for.

This type of repair on a complete failure of the machine to function is termed as breakdown maintenance of the machine. Repair jobs done on a productive machine during normal production schedules are often hurried up to keep up the production schedule and such repairs may be just enough to make the machine working instead of its complete servicing to be in its normal goodness.

If such breakdowns and repairs are repeated frequently, even the whole machine may become unserviceable sooner than its normal serviceable life. For preventing breakdowns on productive machinery, preventive maintenance is carried out periodically.

Production machines do need planned servicing that may be done in free time of the machine before its getting broken down during a production schedule. Such a servicing is called preventive maintenance of the machine because it prevents breakdown of the machine during production time. Jobs often done during preventive maintenance of a machine are –

• Taking care of hurried breakdown repairs done on the machine during the last production schedule,
• Cleaning of dust and dirt accumulating in and around the machine while working,
• Lubrication between moving a fixed parts of the machine to eliminate wearing of parts, saving on driving energy, cool working, and less of noise during production work,
• Replacement of fast-wearing components, such as bearings, brake-linings, carbon-brushes, etc. and critically stressed components of the machine to avoid their failures during production hours,
• Tightening of fastners that might become loose due to vibrations during normal working hours,

With such preventive actions, efforts are made to make the machine fit for working during the whole production schedule before the next preventive maintenance opportunity. Such preventive maintenance opportunities are planned well in advance and the production is deferred to do the planned maintenance of the machine.

In production machines of the same type in large numbers, the preventive maintenance may be planned on few machines at a time turn by turn while others remaining busy in production. In in-line production machinery wherein various machines work in togetherness for production activity, often called a production plant, production by the whole plant is deferred to make room for the preventive maintenance on a periodic basis, say once every week, fortnight, month, or so.

Preventive maintenance of machineries proves beneficial in multiple ways, some of which are enumerated below.

1. Prolongs working life of the machines, thus economizing on capital investment.

2. Avoids breakdowns during production hours thus avoiding idle workforce during a repair work on the machine is being carried out after its breakdown,

3. Keeps production on schedule, thus leading to goodwill overall profitability of the organization with timely deliveries to customers.

4. Reduces need of the maintenance and repair personnel for attending to machinery after they breakdown,

5. Provides peace of mind of all bearing responsibilities of production work - management as well the workforce.