Step by step guide in starting a Preventive Maintenance program.
A large part of keeping a company running smoothly and efficiently is by ensuring that all equipment is functioning to its maximum capability. For that, a routine preventive maintenance needs to be conducted. Aside from keeping their functionality, preventive maintenance helps organizations improve their overall business productivity, work execution, reduce breakdown and ultimately, the safety of everyone.
Corrective maintenance is all and good, but if your company simply rely on corrective maintenance, you are probably wasting money every year due to a lack of a preventive maintenance plan because this approach doesn’t protect the equipment and reduces its lifetime that can lead to an extremely costly failure causing negative effects on reputation, client satisfaction and safety to run a successful business.
The problems above can be avoided with the use of a computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) system that offers preventive maintenance as one of its main functions. Companies can closely monitor of all their facilities to ensure effective preventive maintenance. From keeping record of assets and equipment to track maintenance activities and detailed of the work performed, CMMS aims to smoothly run a company’s entire maintenance process. Here are a few steps in creating an effective preventative equipment maintenance plan:
Let’s get started…
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Create plan and goals
First of all, what do you hope to achieve from your preventive maintenance program? Do you want to reduce expenses by minimizing downtime and reducing costs with repairs or you are looking to increase work efficiency by maximizing production time from your machines? Setting up goals and plan will help in how you shape your program.
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Inventory equipment/assets
Taking stock of your equipment is a crucial step in setting up a PM program. It is time consuming as you’ll be collecting a range of data for each equipment. Determine which asset to add to your PM program before listing down all the assets available. Start with asset name, serial number, category and location of the equipment. Aside from these, you can also record secondary information like its function, age of the equipment, its condition and who is responsible for maintaining it.
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Prioritize and analyze each equipment
First off, you need to document the current condition of the equipment to help you prioritize its importance as part of the PM program. Start by looking at its manufacturer’s specifications to determine the current operational status of assets and from there, you can figure out how crucial each equipment is and would it affect safety or production.
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Schedule Preventive Maintenance
Set a maintenance schedule for short and long-term preventive maintenance work, starting with the high prioritize assets. Create a schedule for the entire year, breaking it down into daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual tasks. Consider the equipment’s history in terms of conditions and manufacturer’s recommendations. Schedule task for each equipment needs to be completed and outline the work needs to be done.
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Train your team and delegate tasks
Take the time to train the staff who will be carrying out the maintenance tasks regardless big or small. Trained staff members are key in determining a successful outcome.
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Track maintenance tasks using CMMS
You don’t want to waste your efforts by tracking the tasks using a spreadsheet. A great solution is to use CMMS to easily manage assets, parts and your PM program overall such as yCloudx. You just need to:
- Log into CMMS
- Choose the assets that are on your PM plan
- Open asset report
Setting up a preventive maintenance program is not as difficult although there’s a lot of data involved. Consider outsourcing your preventive maintenance program to Lestari Global Sdn Bhd. We’ve set up countless preventive maintenance programs for a variety of clients over the years, and we’d be happy to help you get up and running.
