Among the various fronts that need to be managed within an industry, maintaining an organized maintenance planning is essential. This is because when maintenance operations are in order, it is possible to save company resources, time, and budget.
One of the benefits is avoiding the overload of machinery that may be working improperly, consuming more raw material than necessary and consequently wasting supplies.
In contrast, when the factory properly performs periodic maintenance, it ensures that equipment always operates at good capacity, using the ideal amount of raw material. This accelerates work and reduces delays that can be caused by unexpected stoppages due to failures.
This also prevents major expenses with costly repairs or equipment loss, problems that are often caused by a lack of machinery maintenance.
Tips for effective maintenance planning
Maintenance is a task of paramount importance to optimize the capacity of industrial equipment and machinery. But since the utilization of these items can be influenced by external factors, such as weather conditions or misuse, for example, maintenance planning will hardly ever be as perfect as it is on paper.
However, to reduce bottlenecks and improve the proficiency of your maintenance planning, it is important to follow a few tips:
1. Identify the person responsible for maintenance
It is essential to have at least one professional focused on maintenance, who will serve as a point of reference for factory managers. To this end, some industries have a defined PCM (Maintenance Planning and Control) department, while smaller ones designate someone for the role of planner.
Among other duties, this professional (or professionals) must organize maintenance tasks, monitor repair progress, and track the productivity indicators of each piece of equipment.
2. Organize the maintenance schedule
In this step, the planner must organize the maintenance schedule according to the urgency level of each task, taking into account points such as:
- identification of the problem;
- the reason why it happened;
- and the measures that must be taken to correct the issue.
In cases of preventive maintenance, the points above will be hypothetical and based on the historical data of past machine defects and maintenance. In the case of corrective maintenance, it is necessary to understand what actually happened and analyze whether this is a recurring situation or a new factor that needs to be logged for future reference.
3. Standardize and document processes
Once the root cause of the problem is identified, it is important to keep the entire maintenance process documented. This builds a standardized methodology that will support faster decision-making in the future.
This is essential because even if the planner leaves the company and maintenance begins to be managed by another professional, everything will be recorded and productivity will be maintained based on historical data and standardized processes.
How to optimize equipment capacity?
To improve equipment utilization, it is necessary to understand what production capacity is ideal for each one, and whether it aligns with current operations.
Based on this information, it is possible to understand:
- If a machine’s activity is above the ideal production capacity, it may be operating at a higher power than recommended, which can generate overload problems such as overheating or short circuits. These factors can even result in the total loss of the machinery.
- However, if the machine’s activity is below the ideal production capacity, the equipment may be misconfigured or experiencing a defect. This is a problem that can sometimes be resolved simply by making minor adjustments.
Technology for the shop floor
Technology has been gaining more and more ground in the industry because it provides a complete view of production, fostering a fully digital experience and taking into account factors that would be impossible to predict manually. This is because technology learns automatically from machinery and production history.
Within the context of maintenance control, production planning solutions such as Delmia Ortems are great allies. This type of technology digitizes production planning, making it much more solid. This, aligned with good maintenance control, can help in the search for failures and process bottlenecks.
Digital production planning also helps identify equipment that needs maintenance, facilitating the visualization of each one’s performance. Furthermore, they are effective in controlling costs, deadlines, and planning, which greatly optimizes shop floor routine.
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