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August 2004
Plant Maintenance - Deciding if Components should be Inspected or Not?
Have you ever been in a situation where someone says: “we don’t
have time to inspect this equipment; there are just not enough people
in our plant maintenance department”, or perhaps: “Why would
we start inspecting the equipment now, it’s never been done before”.
You feel in your gut that the equipment should be inspected, but how
do you present a compelling argument for your plant maintenance organization?
Here is a simple analysis of the situation IDCON uses.
First, there are only three ways of maintaining any component in your
plant, they are:
1. Operate To Break-Down (OTB)
2. Fixed Time Maintenance (FTM)
3. Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) – Some call this inspection.
Therefore, if an inspection is skipped, we end up with either changing
out the equipment on a set frequency (FTM), or operating the equipment
until it breaks down (OTB). Now, OTB and FTM will be more cost effective
in some cases, but not very often because:
1. We don’t know the life of most components in order to apply
FTM.
2. OTB is usually more expensive than FTM and Condition Based Maintenance
(But not always)
To make a long story short, next time someone decide to skip an inspection
or not to add an inspection, ask if that component should be operated
to Break-Down, or if Fixed Time Maintenance should be used, and if so,
on what frequency.
There are instances where it is not obvious which Maintenance method
is most cost effective. A financial estimate should be performed in these
instances. A three page description of the simple calculation is outlines
in chapter two of our Preventive
Maintenance Manual.
More articles on the subject Preventive Maintenance:
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