How to carry out preventive equipment management?

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With the progress of the times, scientific advancement, and the continuous improvement in automation levels, equipment maintenance has come to play an important role in production. The more advanced a piece of equipment is, the higher its maintenance requirements, as well as the technical skills required of the maintenance personnel. Today, companies still rely primarily on professional technical personnel for equipment management and maintenance, which results in a large amount of complex, repetitive work consuming most of their efforts. As a consequence, many tasks that require specialized skills (such as equipment inspection, calibration, innovation, and improvement) cannot be carried out in a timely and effective manner. However, in actual production, due to operators’ lack of familiarity with the equipment’s performance, functions, and maintenance procedures, mistakes are made, maintenance is inadequate, or potential equipment faults are not detected in time. As a result, the rate of equipment downtime increases, production efficiency declines, and thus equipment maintenance costs keep rising. Therefore, it is urgent and essential to minimize the equipment failure rate by strengthening equipment management. This requires equipment specialists and those responsible for its operation and maintenance to carry out preventive maintenance on the equipment, thereby nipping potential problems in the bud and ensuring its normal, safe, and efficient operation. Preface: The equipment management system can be roughly divided into 4 stages: the reactive maintenance stage, the preventive maintenance stage, the production maintenance stage, and the parallel equipment management model stage. What is lacking in our daily equipment management is the second stage. A scientific preventive equipment management and maintenance system involves comprehensive, systematic, efficient, and inclusive management of equipment throughout its entire lifecycle. The equipment management and maintenance system, based on the importance, usage frequency, and type of tasks associated with the equipment, conducts inspections and tests at appropriate intervals to promptly detect any potential faults in the system, thereby reducing the incidence of system failures. At present, in our daily equipment management, what is lacking is in-depth analysis of the causes of failures and the maintenance data following fault resolution, in order to develop effective inspection plans and preventive maintenance measures. According to the current concepts of equipment management, the equipment maintenance system can be roughly divided into seven steps: routine inspections, daily maintenance, periodic testing, preventive maintenance, equipment repair, statistical analysis, and personnel management. Step 1: Routine inspections. Routine inspections involve the operator’s examination of the equipment’s appearance, working environment, and operating status, or simple functional tests. Problems are identified by checking the equipment operation status through inspection records; necessary corrective actions are taken on-site as appropriate, and reports are made to the relevant equipment maintenance personnel. Step 2: Routine maintenance and recording. Routine maintenance involves the equipment operators carrying out simple daily tasks to maintain the equipment, while keeping detailed records to ensure that all maintenance activities are properly carried out. Although this task does not require high technical skills, the proper operation of the equipment is essential. This requires maintenance personnel to have a high degree of responsibility and a strong sense of duty, as well as basic knowledge of equipment maintenance; the quality of this work directly affects the incidence of equipment failures. Step 3: Regular testing. Regular testing involves periodically checking the equipment, which provides a basis for preventive maintenance, the replacement of equipment components, or making necessary adjustments. In the daily management of equipment, it is also necessary to take into account both its natural lifespan and economic lifespan, to determine whether it still has value for repair and use, thereby making decisions regarding whether to carry out centralized replacements or to scrap the equipment. Step 4: Preventive maintenance. Preventive maintenance refers to taking proactive measures before a malfunction occurs in the device that needs maintenance, in order to avoid the emergence of potential failure issues. Based on the characteristics of the equipment, necessary maintenance measures such as disassembly and repair are carried out regularly or irregularly to keep the system equipment in better working condition, reduce the system’s failure rate, prevent sudden failures, and extend the equipment’s lifespan. Step 5: Equipment repair. Equipment repair involves diagnosing any system failures that have occurred, identifying their causes, and fixing the faulty equipment. This is the step that is performed most frequently in our daily equipment management; it is involved in the three processes of inspection, maintenance, and testing, as well as preventive maintenance. Step 6: Statistical analysis. The statistical analysis of mechanical and electrical equipment failures is an important part of the maintenance system, involving in-depth analysis of the root causes of these failures as well as their development trends. To gain a comprehensive understanding of the system’s status, improve its reliability, reduce the failure rate, and primarily prevent failures that could have serious consequences, it is essential to emphasize the research and management of the patterns and causes of failures. First of all, attention must be paid to the timeliness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness of recording the original information of equipment. This requires equipment management and maintenance personnel to keep detailed and accurate records of each equipment failure that occurs, including the time when the failure took place, the symptoms of the failure, the time it took to repair the failure, the actions taken to address the issue, and the spare parts used. Based on these original data, it is possible to calculate the equipment failure rate, the availability rate, and the average time between failures. Additionally, it is possible to identify the types of equipment that experience failures, classify the failures, and determine their severity levels. Then, based on this, systematic fault analysis is conducted to examine the patterns of fault occurrence and summarize the causes of such faults ； Finally, practical and effective improvement measures are proposed and fed back into the equipment maintenance system, thereby establishing a closed-loop management system for equipment failure analysis, summarization, and implementation of improvement measures, so as to prevent the recurrence of failures. Step 7: Personnel Management. The management of equipment ultimately comes down to personnel management, in order to achieve scientific equipment management. Firstly, it is necessary to have specialized maintenance and management personnel. Secondly, it is necessary to fully mobilize people’s enthusiasm and creativity, unleash the initiative and enthusiasm of equipment operators at all levels, ensure this through practical systems, achieve reasonable division of labor and cooperation, and involve everyone in equipment maintenance and management. Thirdly, it is essential to have clear roles and responsibilities. Following the principle that those who use a device are also responsible for its maintenance, one device should not be under the management of multiple people; multiple managers mean no one is actually in charge. It is necessary to change the traditional management concept wherein equipment maintenance is handled solely by a single maintenance personnel. This involves raising equipment operators’ awareness of equipment maintenance and making effective use of scientific management methods, so as to achieve optimal results in equipment management. Conclusion: Preventive maintenance is not a standalone topic. It requires advanced management concepts as its foundation, along with daily inspections, routine maintenance, periodic testing, and analysis and summarization of faults. Based on past maintenance experience, a reasonable, effective, and feasible maintenance plan must be formulated according to the specific operating environment of the equipment, its inherent characteristics, and previous usage history. Only in this way can preventive maintenance be truly implemented, thereby achieving its intended effects. This ensures that electromechanical equipment operates in a healthy cycle, allowing the advanced equipment to bring about corresponding improvements in management efficiency, and ultimately enhancing the overall management level of modern equipment.