MAINTENANCE AS THE BACKBONE OF OUR MACHINE'S OPERATIONAL LIFESPAN

Hi Dear Steemians, It's a pleasure having you here once again. First, I'll like to appreciate you for your wonderful support. You're the best!!!

The other time, I found my way back to the Mechanical Engineering world where I spoke on the Life Enhancing concept of Interchangeability in the Production process and our lives in general. I was able to show us the big gap we will need to fill if there is a non-existence of interchangeability - Hell! Is what it would be like.

Do check it out (later, of course!)

Today wouldn't be different as I would be writing on another very invaluable phenomenon in the industrial world and our lives in general.

Some few weeks ago, I was at an engineering workshop filled with different type of machines in it. On entering, I was wowed by the numbers of machine they have in there. On a first count, I could see that they have almost three copies of each machine even as small as the workshop's layout is. But on moving closer, I noticed something different.

Many of the machines, which was majorly Lathe machines, Milling machines, are non-functioning. Only about 3/5 of the total machine present in there still functions perfectly. Some only had minor faults while some were totally condemned despite looking "too young to die".

The devil who ate up those machine's operational lifespan is noticeably a "Lack of Maintenance" or "Limited Maintenance" as the case might be.

They were obviously "maintenance" sick, even those ones still in operation aren't left out as the sound of friction from a suspected "lack of oiling" in some moving parts could be heard in the workshop.

Then I wondered, is it ignorance? or possibly a shortage of funds? or simply stinginess? Because it was obvious that more resources are getting lost than what would be lost if there was a prior maintenance routine in place.

Often times, financial managers are always paying the deaf ears to the maintenance engineers because they feel they don't spend money on things that show immediate results.

But then, isn't it better to secure the future than run on temporal means? Isn't it fairer to lose a little cash to prior maintenance than spending a lot of cash on plant shutdown, loss of machines, lower production and sometimes loss of life? I soliloquized (I definitely wasn't saying that to the man!)

So, by now, I believe you are aware that I'm trying to iron out the need and importance of having a maintenance plan lined up in our industries as well as many other things we use.

Before I continue with more questions about why maintenance is a worthy practice, I'll move on to explain in details what maintenance is and types of maintenance in existence as related to our industries.

So, stay with me as I take you through the journey.

^{Pxhere Creative Commons CC0 : Abandoned Machine.}

What is Maintenance?

Maintenance is simply any activity or process carried out in order to restore or retain a facility in a good and acceptable working condition.

Maintenance can simply be interpreted as both activities performed in order to restore a facility from a bad condition or activities that help retain a facility in good condition.

Thus, from the definition, Maintenance isn't just about "repair" as many may think, it also encompasses every initial activity or process put in place to prevent damage from occurring or at least to reduce the probability of its occurrence.

As said earlier, Maintenance has no real "product" as it may be in other industrial activities and so, it is usually met with bias in terms of attention in an industry.

Maintenance involves all technical and other procedures performed at scheduled intervals and under stated conditions to restore or retain machines in satisfactory and acceptable working conditions.

But do we really need maintenance?

This question would probably find an answer if we were still stuck in the days where production didn't involve big machine worth billions as we are witnessing in the world of today. We probably wouldn't be needing much of it and its "financial implications" wouldn't even be felt that much.

But then, the world of today is characterized with every day technological advancement and more and more machines are aiding our works and so, requires good attention from every owner to find a way of maintaining them.

For companies, more than the positive effect of maintenance on their machine longevity, they are entitled to many other benefits like stronger competitiveness, increased production level, increased machine utilization and of course, higher profit margin.

Maintenance has a way by which it directly or indirectly affects your productivity and hence, gains. So, more attention must be paid to it if you employ a lot of automated and high-level machine whose breakdown could lead to large loss whenever it happens.

So, lack of maintenance or poor level of maintenance can thus lead to some significant consequences of lasting impacts. Of these consequences, the following are prominent ones that could really affect a company's production level or returns:

• Shortened Lifespan of Facility
• Excessive overtime
• Loss of Lives
• Frequent Emergency Maintenance work
• Loss in production output
• Inability to meet delivery schedules
• Reduction of Company reputation and Image
• Poor use of maintenance staff

As said earlier, maintenance isn't just about breakdown maintenance, it exists in many other forms that individually offer the industry that implement them a level of protection as regards the health of their facilities.

So, we will be looking at different types of maintenance and their significance in the sections that follows.

According to industrial applications and as related to a maintenance engineer, the types of maintenance available to him are categorized under two headings:

• Planned Maintenance
• Unplanned Maintenance

The Unplanned maintenance is any maintenance activities that are embarked on after a breakdown or damage has occurred and helps to restore a facility to a good or at least a satisfactory working condition. Here, a shutdown of the industrial plant or reduced production is usually experienced while this restoration is done.

Under this heading, we have the following:

• Breakdown Maintenance
• Corrective Maintenance

The planned maintenance, on the other hand, is any maintenance activities that have to do with retaining a facility in good and acceptable working conditions through planned and specified methods of maintenance. They are put in place to monitor and control the conditions of the facilities and help reduce the probability of breakdown or other consequences of lack of maintenance.

Under this heading, we have the following:

• The Predictive Maintenance
• The Preventive Maintenance
• The Condition-based Maintenance
• The Proactive Maintenance

Today, I'll take us through the unplanned maintenance which is the one we are conversant with, usually have to do with "repair" or "Replacement".

^{Image by me @mrbreeziewrites}

• The Breakdown Maintenance

The Breakdown Maintenance is an unplanned type of maintenance that is triggered only after the deterioration in a facility leads to a functional failure. It usually involves a repair a times total replacement of that facility. It is usually referred to as reactive maintenance, run-to-fail or fix-when-fail based on its mode of implementation.

The Methodology used in the breakdown maintenance is based on the belief that every part or component of a facility is expected to deteriorate or fail at the same time and rule out the possibility of considering repair on some delicate part until the whole facility stops working.

This methodology believes that it is a waste of time and other resources to be repairing or replacing some parts of a machine but rather favors managing of such facility even with the less functioning parts till a point where the facility completely fails.

This kind of maintenance, if it's the only one practiced, can be very dangerous as labor and material could be short when the sudden and unplanned breakdown occurs.

Does it have any benefit at all?

The Benefits of this type of Maintenance is only the reservation of resources like time and money while the machine is still functioning without any maintenance fees incurred. But as we must have noted, more loss would be incurred than the initial fees saved.

Hey! What about the downsides?

The downside of this types of maintenance includes an unplanned shutdown that could lead to a great loss in production level. The consequence in a case where more than one machine breaks down is even more complex. Such case would then require a scale of preference or order of importance to be improvised and then, some functions would need be paused while maintenance reaches it.

Another huge effect of this type of maintenance is high investment in repair parts and this could be very high when the spare part needed is expensive or not easily available. More money would be needed to force it's available.

Also, inventory carrying charges would be incurred on stocking parts ahead of breakdown. Such maintenance practice compels the company who operates on it to keep a high inventory of parts in anticipation of breakdown. Many times, the breakdown might not happen at a near time as expected and the carrying costs keep increasing over time and could be so high and significant on a long run.

Another implication is the mismanagement of labor. In this type of maintenance, Labor is thrown at the most urgent breakdown when it happens and during a low occurrence of breakdown, they are used ineffectively or rather, they remain "jobless". With this, they are either frustrated or at a deeper look, are a low ROI (Return on invest) to the company.

Breakdown maintenance may save time and cost initially, before breakdown occurs, but incurs double if not triple or even quadruple when breakdown eventually happens.

• The Corrective Maintenance

The Corrective Maintenance is another form of unplanned maintenance that is available to a maintenance engineer for implementation. This type of maintenance improves on the philosophy of breakdown maintenance which is a run-to-fail approach. It rather improves the condition of a facility and its component when a fault is noticed.

Here, a facility is treated as one in which some components are believed to be more delicate and susceptible to quicker deterioration as compared to other components. So, corrective maintenance is done on this parts before a total breakdown occurs.

This can be seen as curing headaches and other signs of malaria rather than waiting for the time that malaria eventually happens. This type of maintenance makes it easy for planned maintenance to be possible because even when planned routine for maintenance is in place, we can't rule out the possibility of break down of some parts of a facility. So such type of maintenance eventually aids the practice of Planned maintenance.

Now what are the gains of operating on Corrective Maintenance?

As expected, being an improvement over the Reactive maintenance, it has more benefits for the Maintenance Engineers. One prominent one is the reduced possibility of the repair part emergency purchase and thus preserving a whole of cash that is "ruined" on it.

When corrective maintenance is continually performed on a facility, it would help increase the lifespan and health of such facility. As a component deteriorates, corrective maintenance takes care of it. This reduces the possibility of sudden breakdown and the advent of "emergency repair parts purchase".

Another gain from operating on Corrective Maintenance is its reduction in "forced" spare part inventory that is operated in Breakdown Maintenance. With corrective maintenance, spare parts are used as a component deteriorates or spoils and thus reduces the carrying cost of such part. The Breakdown maintenance would rather keep all the spare parts and wait till the facility is condemned.

But then, does the following justify its adoption?

The fact that Corrective maintenance also falls under an unplanned maintenance routine alone makes it an undesirable method of maintenance because it still doesn't help prevent breakdown or failure but rather, it acts like a "First Aid" for the facility.

As we all know, "First Aid" remains temporal and cannot give the needed treatment or recommended treatment as the case might be. So, we are faced with many downsides operating on this method of maintenance.

First, we cannot predict a breakdown and such situation still leave us with an impending or better put, "hovering" breakdown. When this eventually occurs, we may have to pay a lot for such, in terms of financial implications, time and even reputation.

Also, Labor still faces ineffective usage as they will be more active in times of part failure and its corresponding repair or replacement. So, we still face the situation of low ROI even if it's a bit boosted from that of Breakdown maintenance.

Though, we can refer to the Corrective Maintenance as planned maintenance to an extent as inspection of deterioration of a facility part is partly done so as to improve the condition before a breakdown occurs. But as we have seen, it still falls more under unplanned as we can't determine when this fault might occur and it still involves emergency repair after a fault comes up.

Conclusion

Hence, we can all agree that maintenance is necessary if not yet convincingly compulsory for some. It just doesn't give you financial gains, it improves your reputation and image.

The unplanned type of maintenance as explained helps in saving time and resources that maintenance would take but would put you in a worse position if breakdown eventually occurs. The Breakdown maintenance only works when breakdown would not lead to a long time shutdown or large financial implications.

The corrective maintenance, which looks more improved would also only help to extend breakdown time but cannot help in monitoring and eliminate causes of failure or prevent it as the case may be.

In the next part, I'll dive into the planned maintenance techniques and some modern maintenance processes.

I hope you were able to learn few things about Engineering Maintenance and its important. Thanks for stopping by, you are appreciated

Best regards.

REFERENCES

• Ismaila, O. S., "Mechanical Maintenance". Lecture note for MCE509, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria

• Adejuyigbe, S.B. (2002). "Production Management (Design, Planning, Implementation and Control)"
  .Topfun Publications, Akure, Nigeria

• World Class Maintenance Management, Terry Wireman, Industrial Press Inc., 1990, pp. 7, 73.

• Fiix | Breakdown Maintenance

• Wikipedia | Maintenance

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