All entries for June 2010

Total productive maintenance and knowledge management

During the analysis on TPM, it is quite natural to realise that knowledge management is actually throughout the whole process of TPM. TPM is focus on getting every person in an organisation involved into the process of the transformational maintenance method. Traditionally,  maintenance activities belong to maintenance department only. Now, within TPM, top management decides to reform maintenance responsibilities and operators are responsible for some parts of maintenance on their own machines. Then, that is the show time of knowledge management. the process of collecting, storing, sharing and generating vastly facilitates the implementation of TPM and provides firmly support.

: 06 Jun 2010 23:27 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

preventive and predictive

Preventive maintenance is not just about MTTF statistics.

With researches in PMA, I've built up a clearer view of what preventive maintenance is. Basically, preventive maintenance could be divided into several parts based on contents. Traditionally, preventive maintenance is to plan maintenance according to industry MTTF statistics which identifies the specific stages in machines' working life and the probability and level of occurring failures. this method surely could reduce the probability of failure in production when the statistics and actual conditions are nearly the same. For companies who do not care about maintenance costs. this method is absolutely fine. However, globalised business environment influence companies to cut unnecessary costs for return of extra profit margins and competitiveness. An example for preventive maintenance is that car maintenance. Drivers are instructed to do service with after certain miles at pre-arranged intervals.  

Predictive maintenance, on the other hand, take more into account that the actual conditions of machines based on the instruction of MTTF statistics. Main techniques of have actual data of machines' condition is to monitor and test them. Because it involves in human resource, that would be inevitable to commit objective mistakes. Decisions usually made by experienced maintenance managers. 

Though Predictive maintenance looks better than preventive maintenance, in some case, people might select one suitable method for particular business needs.

: 06 Jun 2010 11:13 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

why corrective maintenance?

Corrective maintenance is a traditional technique that people conduct maintenance when there is a failure occurring and decreasing production availability. Actually, there is no sign of maintenance before failures. In another word, Corrective maintenance is waiting for the occurrence of expected failures.

What I'm thinking now is that in which case people might adopt such method to maintain assets. my preferred answer is that there is hardly any company would prefer to adopt it. the reason for that is doing business in these days is extremely difficult to compete in. businessmen are barely able to afford the damages caused by insufficient productivity and relevant costs.

By second thought, there might be some businesses might apply this method who could not invest adequate money in maintenance. In other cases, some greedy businessmen might neglect the importance of maintenance. However, eventually, the foreseeing consequences would provide a lesson. i think that might be the reason why there are successful businesses and business bankrupted.

: 06 Jun 2010 10:45 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem