The 3 challenges facing maintenance teams
In recent years, the industrial sector has undergone profound change, driven by the advent of new technologies. In this context, maintenance teams play a central role and must meet challenges that go beyond simply ensuring that equipment runs smoothly.
Industry players who want to be part of what is known as “the 4th industrial revolution” have no choice but to focus on optimized maintenance methods that reduce costs, improve the safety of field teams, increase the company’s commercial and environmental performance, and ensure the operational continuity of production facilities at all times.
Reduce maintenance costs and losses
One of the main challenges facing maintenance departments is cost reduction. An industrial site experiences an average of 27 hours of unplanned machine downtime each month. These periods, which are significant overall, during which production is partially or totally interrupted, have considerable financial repercussions for companies. But that’s not all. In order to respond as quickly as possible and resume production, it is necessary to implement emergency measures and deploy substantial human and material resources, which also come at a cost.
As such, maintenance teams are tasked with minimizing unplanned machine downtime and performing maintenance operations strategically to avoid unnecessary expenses.
Faced with this challenge, new tools have emerged, notably predictive maintenance. This working method, which is based on machine learning, makes it possible to detect operational anomalies that could lead to equipment failure before the breakdown occurs.
On the one hand, predictive maintenance reduces costs associated with production downtime by scheduling maintenance during planned downtime. On the other hand, it reduces maintenance costs by telling technicians precisely where and when they need to intervene.
Improving the productivity of industrial sites
The advent of IoT in industry has helped redefine the role of maintenance teams. Companies using predictive maintenance solutions can now rely on data provided by sensors placed on their equipment to improve the productivity of their production sites. By providing valuable information on the operation of the site’s machines and tools, predictive maintenance software enables maintenance teams to identify the most vulnerable parts and equipment, or simply those that cause recurring problems. This observation can then lead either to a change of supplier in order to acquire parts of better quality or more suited to the environment in question, or to a report to the manufacturer with a view to enabling them to improve their products.
Ultimately, the use of connected sensors in the industrial sector could therefore result in more efficient industrial sites that are less prone to breakdowns and require less maintenance.
Ensure equipment availability
To reduce costs and production times, more and more production sites are operating on a just-in-time basis. But while this production method does increase a company’s performance, it significantly complicates the task of maintenance teams, who must ensure the operational continuity of production facilities despite having zero spare parts in stock. So how can you ensure that a spare part will be available when you need to repair faulty equipment?
Once again, predictive maintenance is proving to be an essential solution for manufacturers. By detecting weak signals indicating the end of life or malfunction of equipment, predictive maintenance enables maintenance teams to anticipate breakdowns and therefore order the parts needed to repair equipment so that they are on hand when the intervention is planned, without having to overload stocks.
The result: relieved employees, satisfied customers, exceeded performance targets, and a reduced environmental impact!
