Your equipment must be maintained to function effectively and consistently. This is the bedrock of any world-class manufacturing business. And already, many businesses are doing things in this area.
But, each manufacturing organization needs help with maintenance management. Many more concerns still need to be solved. And it would help if you also comprehended its implications for equipment dependability.
Modern facilities are highly automated, they are transitioning from the push to the pull production approach. Items or equipment that were formerly manually operated are now autonomously controlled. While this is a positive thing for many reasons, specific issues arise due to this trend toward autonomy.
Preventive maintenance is one of the essential pillars of world-class manufacturing. But it is often overlooked because it occurs “behind the scenes.” Preventive care entails avoiding unplanned shutdowns and costs—quality-harming occurrences by systematically detecting and correcting equipment defects.
Maintenance must become an enterprise-wide try in a company-wide implementation of autonomous maintenance. With this, the level of performance significantly improves and primary indicators need little interpretation and can be reported rapidly daily. They provide a foundation for implementing continuous process improvement.
Thus, companies must grasp these problems and adapt their maintenance practice to begin.
Role of Autonomous Maintenance
Autonomous maintenance can check, detect, and correct faults with a piece of equipment without the intervention of a human. This maintenance is performed on sophisticated machinery or systems that rely on computers.
Traditionally, autonomous maintenance was done by a human operator. But today’s robots can do jobs that were before thought to be too challenging for automation. Repairing damaged pieces and replacing worn parts are examples of this.
By removing the need for human labor, the autonomous maintenance process can help businesses. Many companies can save money and boost efficiency in the long run.
Autonomous maintenance’s job is to provide comprehensive and efficient repair services for your machinery and equipment. The job includes:
- Conducting repairs
- Maintaining equipment and machinery
- Maintaining workplace safety standards
- Ensuring that all employees are informed of health and safety rules
- Inspections, cleaning, lubrication, and adjustments
Autonomous maintenance technicians must understand how various devices work to execute this duty. They can promptly spot any problems before it even arises. They must also be able to operate without supervision and interact with other team members. Furthermore, they must be able to follow processes appropriately.
Elements of Autonomous Maintenance
Autonomous maintenance does industrial equipment with minimal input from outside sources. There are five kinds of autonomous maintenance, they are:
1. Preventive maintenance
This maintenance is the practice of assessing and maintaining equipment before it fails. This maintenance guarantees that the equipment will continue to operate. It can also eliminate the need for more significant repairs and other issues.
This helps in detecting problems before they become costly and time-consuming difficulties. This might include inspecting an object regularly, such as a machine tool. It can also entail inspecting parts for deterioration before they fair altogether.
2. Maintenance management
These are procedures and methods used to plan and schedule repairs and replacements. It ensures your organization has strategies to replace parts or repair malfunctioning machines.
Setting up a maintenance plan defines when each piece of equipment should be repaired or replaced. This develops a database that details which components have been replaced on each piece of equipment. When necessary, the equipment may be rapidly accessible.
3. Plant maintenance
Plant maintenance includes repairing or replacing all infrastructural components of a plant such as pipelines, cables, and so on. It also maintains all systems needed to govern its functioning, for example, the company’s HVAC systems.
This entails inspecting the whole facility every month or two to ensure everything is working. All machines in operation may view floor layouts at any given moment.
4. Equipment Reliability
Equipment reliability refers to how probable any particular piece of equipment is to perform without failure over time. For autonomous maintenance systems to function well, some evaluation must be completed. This can determine which components are more likely to fail than others.
Consider the process of maintaining a machine that manufactures parts. A common failure mode is triggered by the failure of parts that are not serviceable. This failure might cause extensive production delays and a loss of consumer satisfaction.
You might develop an automated mechanism for replacing these components with spare ones to prevent this failure. The machine maker offers its own maintenance service for all machines in the factory. It will be utilized in place of human maintenance staff.
Importance of Autonomous Maintenance
The necessity of equipment dependability, maintenance management, and planning is becoming more evident. The significance of autonomous maintenance is clear in many ways, including the following:
- Autonomous maintenance is vital. It reduces malfunctions and increases the dependability of equipment. This can result in excellent safety and productivity. It can also result in better equipment performance and decreased maintenance costs.
- Planning is the most critical aspect of the success of an autonomous maintenance program. It is necessary to plan to establish what equipment has to be maintained. You must know how frequently it should be held, who will conduct the work, and how much it will cost. It can help you detect possible issues with equipment that can result in breakdowns.
- Each individual or team must be knowledgeable about every piece of equipment in their facility at any moment. That is why it is critical for everyone engaged with a bit of kit to grasp its fundamental operation. They can notice when anything goes wrong or isn’t performing correctly.
- An autonomous maintenance program ensures that each piece of equipment receives regular care. It can be from skilled and competent specialists. This guarantees that problems are treated before they become more severe. In that case, there will be no need for costly repairs or replacements in the future!
Benefits of Autonomous Maintenance
Autonomous maintenance, as the name implies, refers to using technology to maintain machinery and equipment regularly. There are many benefits that a company can get out of implementing it. They include:
1. Maintenance Cost
The expense of administration, labor, and equipment is more than if you used an automated method. In reality, deploying an autonomous maintenance system ranges between $8 and &10 million. This is where your company’s internal resources come into play. If your organization has trained staff ready to work on new technology, they can help deploy the system at a fraction of the cost.
2. Proactive Maintenance
The advantages of preventive maintenance are numerous. It enables you to maintain your equipment while lowering the expense of repairs and downtime. Proactive maintenance also reduces the possibility of costly accidents.
3. Employee Engagement
Employees spend less time on tasks that add no value to the business when they use automated maintenance. This is a significant advantage in a highly competitive sector. Employees are more engaged when they work on projects that benefit the organization and its customers. The more committed your staff are, the more likely they will be to do a good job.
4. Focus on Complex Work
One of the significant advantages of autonomous maintenance is that it allows you to concentrate on complicated tasks. You may spend less time debugging and repairing problems with an automated system. Thus, you will have more time to think about enhancing your product.
Final Thoughts
Maintenance is not a glamorous procedure when done well. Yet, it should be seen as an essential aspect of the production process.
Now, the world is going toward using robots to work on equipment, it requires complicated mathematics in calculating scenarios and physics to function correctly. All this is due to the need for efficiency in manufacturing operations.
Many businesses, like the car industry, airlines, hospitals and nursing homes, the military, and so on, can profit from this approach. It is worthwhile to investigate autonomous maintenance.
Exploring new methods to increase efficiency and job quality is never too early. The advantages of using this plan will become clear almost immediately. Thus, your company’s bottom line will increase.
