Surviving in a highly competitive market like the current one, requires much effort on the part of all the human resources of an organization; since the top management, even the operators; it also requires, the ingenuity of forceful strategies that achieve the capture of potential clients, and more even strategies that seek the continued satisfaction of the needs of the Current customers.
It is for all of the above, that day-to-day organizations seek to implement actions that aim to achieve the proposed objectives. These actions must implemented in all functional areas of it, in such a way that synergy and good results are obtained.
Without a doubt, all these actions bring with them, the use of technology, represented in a greater mechanization of the productive processes, which demands a great effort of the personnel in charge of keeping the equipment in good condition used for the development of the activities of the organization. Right in this moment, the maintenance area becomes more important, because it is responsible for the maintenance in good condition of the machines and equipment belonging to a company.
The need arises to implement a type of maintenance according to needs and that allows the achievement of the objectives set in time expected, meeting the deadlines for delivery of the product and / or service and delivering high quality products.
It appears here, the term of preventive maintenance, which in recent years It has become an invaluable weapon for good preservation conditions of the machines and equipment of an organization.
By means of preventive maintenance, failure reduction is achieved, which could cause delays in the activities of the company, it is also maximized the use of machinery, its availability and maintainability. As well it manages to increase its reliability.
In the preventive maintenance program, you must take into account, not only the technical aspects, but also those related to management and organization, considering economic, safety and environmental factors. The need of preventive maintenance is based on the fact that any machine or equipment suffers a series of degradations throughout its useful life, which if not avoided or eliminate, the purpose for which they were created is not fully achieved, the performance decreases and its lifespan is reduced, which in turn leads to see affected the achievement of the objectives of an organization.
On the other hand, through the implementation of this program of maintenance, it gives greater security to the operators of the machines at the moment of maneuvering them; This is one of the main objectives of this type of maintenance, thus reducing the accident rates in the company.
A preventive maintenance program is definitely an effective weapon, which can be accessed by organizations if they wish and that will be great help to improve their activities and offer high quality products, which meet the expectations of our customers.
Definition of Maintenance
It is an alternative service within the operation of a company, characterized by a series of activities carried out in order to correct, prevent and some cases predict failures or breakdowns that affect the normal functioning of the machines, keeping them in safe operating conditions.
“It is the set of actions undertaken in an Organization for the purposes of adequately preserve their equipment and facilities, holding their performance in conditions of reliability and respecting Safety, Health and
Caring for the Environment, assumed from their own commitment to business and performance, with Cost Optimization as an associated objective. “
Importance of Maintenance
The objective of Maintenance is to conserve all the assets that make up the links of the system directly and indirectly affected to services, in the better operating conditions, with a very good level of reliability, quality and at the lowest possible cost.
The maintenance area should not only maintain the machines but also the installations: lighting, computer networks, energy systems electrical, compressed air, water, air conditioning, internal streets, floors, deposits, etc. It must coordinate with human resources a plan for the continuous staff training as it is important to keep the staff
updated.
Purpose of Maintenance
The purpose of maintenance is to achieve the maximum level of effectiveness in the operation of the productive system and services with the least contamination of the environment and greater security for the staff at the lowest possible cost. The which implies: conserving the production and services system working with the best level of reliability possible, reduce the frequency and severity of failures, apply the standards of occupational hygiene and safety, minimize the degradation of environment, control, and finally reduce costs to its minimum expression.
The maintenance must follow the general guidelines determined previously, so that the production is not affected by breakages or unforeseen events that could arise.
Objectives of Maintenance
The maintenance objectives must be aligned with those of the company and these they must be specific and be present in the actions carried out by the area.
These objectives will be those that we mention below:
- Maximum production. Ensure optimal availability and maintain reliability of systems, facilities, machines and equipment. Repair faults in the as little time as possible.
- Minimum cost. Reduce faults to a minimum, increase lifespan of the machines and installations and optimal management of stock.
- Quality required. When repairs are made to the equipment and facilities, apart from solving the problem, the quality must be maintained required.
Functions of Maintenance
Among the main functions of maintenance we find:
- Plan, develop and execute maintenance programs for the existing machinery.
- Decide on the replacement and / or modernization of the current equipment and carry them out if necessary.
- Select the appropriate personnel to carry out these functions.
- Request tools and spare parts.
- Implement programs and make them known to the personnel in charge of the area of maintenance, in order to carry out periodic evaluations.
- Create the control mechanisms to monitor the development of the maintenance functions.
Types of Maintenance
1. Corrective maintenance. It is the maintenance that is executed after a failure occurred in a certain machine, so it must be carried out in a urgent. The personnel in charge of reporting faults is the user of the machine and the person in charge of carrying out the repairs is the personnel of maintenance.
The emergency corrective should act as quickly as possible with the objective of avoiding costs and material and / or major human damage.
2. Preventive maintenance. It’s a kind of maintenance, you’re looking mainly the detection and prevention of failures in the operation of the machines and equipment of a company, before they occur. This is done by means of periodic inspections and change of elements in poor conditions or damaged It is based mainly on the reliability of machinery and equipment.
The origin of this type of maintenance arose by statistically analyzing life useful of the equipment and its mechanical elements and carrying out their maintenance based on the periodic replacement of elements independently of condition or condition of deterioration and wear of the same. Its great limitation is the degree of uncertainty when defining the moment of substitution of the element.
3. Predictive maintenance. This type of maintenance is based on predicting the fault before it occurs. It’s about getting ahead of this one or at the moment when the equipment or element stops working in its conditions optimal. To achieve this, tools and techniques are used to monitor physical parameters.
Predictive maintenance covers a set of inspection techniques, analysis and diagnosis, organization and planning of interventions that do not affect the service of the equipment, and that try to adjust to the maximum the useful life of the element in service at the time planned for the intervention. Predictive maintenance could be included in preventive maintenance, the latter being understood in a broad sense.
4. Total Productive Maintenance (TPM). This system characterized by the acronym TPM (total productive maintenance), places all the members of the organization, in the task of executing a preventive maintenance program, with the objective of maximizing the effectiveness of the goods. Center then the program in the human factor of the whole company, for which tasks are assigned of maintenance to be carried out in small groups, by means of driving motivating
The TPM is explained by:
- Total effectiveness in order to obtain adequate profitability, taking into account account that this refers to production, quality, cost, delivery time, morality, safety, health and the environment.
- Total maintenance system consisting of the prevention of maintenance (maintenance-free design to which we have already referred) and in the improvement of maintainability.
- Autonomous intervention of personnel in maintenance tasks.
- Permanent improvement of processes to improve maintenance.
Once the employees are well trained and trained, they will expects them to take care of the basic repairs, from cleaning the equipment to charge, lubrication (oil and grease changes), part adjustments mechanics, inspection and daily detection of abnormal events in the team’s functioning. For this, it is necessary that they have understood the way of operating the equipment and can detect the signals that advertise about the proximity of arrival of the faults.
The main maintenance will continue to be carried out by specialists, who have adequate training and instruments.
We must bear in mind that specialists have traditionally said that production operators act incorrectly on the machines and that’s why they break. For its part, the production people express, that those of maintenance repair them poorly and that’s why the machines cannot stand. For further increase this antinomy, the maintenance workers earn more than the of production, which is why the latter, when dealing with some tasks of the former claim wage claims and indoctrination of this philosophy of work is essential.