What are the most effective ways to improve equipment uptime?

Preventive maintenance is the key to equipment uptime. Even if nothing is wrong, preventive maintenance should be carried out as per schedule, to ensure healthiness of the equipment. Periodic monitoring through NDT, close watch to operational parameters for any excursions and deviations, close analysis of any deviating parameter (s) to identify any problem in the equipment are key to avoid breakdowns. Maintenance is costly, breakdowns are costlier.

Some of the most effective ways to improve equipment uptime: 1. Imbibe a culture of predictive & preventive maintenance. 2. Maintain sufficient spares in stock. 3. Train operators & maintenance personnel to improve their skills of attending major repair jobs. 4. Inculcate a culture of receiving feedback from operators and helpers who are on the machine 24x7. 5. Have a pro-active approach towards solving issues, foreseen by the operators and helpers. 6. Smooth handover of the equipment between shift changeovers. 7. Reward workers for their punctuality, thereby increasing their drive to be at work on time. 8. Incentivize the production targets. 9. Offer a safe working environment. 10. Effective equipment selection at the planning stage.

To improve equipment Uptime, first you must have data to work with, "In God I trust, for everything else, bring data" wise words of Edwards Deming. Data will point you in the right direction on what you need to work on to get your results. Secondly, when you are sure of which components of the machine has the highest failure rates, a detailed problem solving follow to ascertain root cause and most importantly put a country measure in place to eliminate chain of failures permanently. And then start tracking results, be sure to check for spikes while trending results, positive or negative spikes, for every spike also do a problem solving.

Through machine learning, operational data analytics and predictive asset health monitoring, engineers can optimize maintenance and reduce reliability risks to plant or business operations. Software designed to support preventive maintenance helps produce stable operations, ensure compliance with warranties and resolve issues impacting production — before they happen. For e.g. we have high vibration, sound or by NDT method we have notice some malfunctioning in fan then it should by reason of unbalance, lubrication which can rectify in opportunity of maintenance.

I have watched several mills achieve world class runtimes by building quality lubrication routes using the proper lubrication products and using the correct amount. Cleanliness is very important to pay attention to and also try to do grease routes about the same day every week. Also alignments are critical to be as close to zero as possible and you will achieve much better availability’s and run times. If you get these 2 factors under control you will see the difference in time.

How does the manufacturer know the environment you are operating under? I had two pumps - the same pumps that pumped water - nothing complicated. One was used to cool the hydraulic system in a coke ovens - very hot very dusty very dirty - the system was operated every 10 minutes - 24/7. The other was used to pump water through a radiator on a cooling system in the machine shop - extremely clean, usually cool,used on a few hot days during the Summer and then only in the hot part of the day. Consequence of a failure of the coke oven pump - definite downtime of the ovens with a chance of it being for weeks- failure of the machine shop pump - open the doors and use portable fansThe exact same pumps the exact same recommendations - really?

I agree that predictive monitoring and root cause investigations help but I also believe that quality replacement parts and quality maintenance craftsmen play a large roll. If you replace cheap plastic parts with new cheap plastic parts you can do root cause studies forever and never gain any real ground. Also, I believe that true craftsmen see and feel potential problems that less skilled workers miss. As the old saying goes, if you are paying peanuts, you're hiring monkeys.

To enhance equipment uptime effectively, focus on preventive and predictive maintenance, operator training, spare parts management, condition monitoring, cross-functional teamwork, data-driven decisions, supplier collaboration, energy efficiency, reliable procedures, and employee engagement. These strategies collectively reduce downtime and boost operational efficiency.

Follow manufacturers maintenance schedule. Then add or adjust to the program according to environment, operating demands or any conditions that increase service intervals. If you don’t schedule time for maintenance, your equipment will schedule it for you,

In my experience preventive maintenance is the way but I gravitate or should I say the statement and practice keep them running as stated by Mr Charles Latino we should ask the question how do we keep the equipment running. Have a culture of fix before failure..... Inspect Plan Schedule And repair/replace All of this in maintenance windows giving minimum interruption to production.

The problem with predictive maintenance is the focus on looking for failures. Whilst that may sound obvious, a predictive strategy does not reduce the number of failures, although it does reduce the cost of failures. The real goal should be a proactive approach whereby the root cause is monitored and controlled to avoid failure, thus reducing the number of failures altogether.

While you are investing in all this, it is also important to bring your technicians up to speed in deriving actionable outcomes from all that data - training!

All the predictive tools has added in leaps and bounds to the maintenance industry. But in all of this let us not forget to strike the balance....this still requires the human touch and the basics maintenance verification and testing. Not forgetting having skilled people that need to interpret these inputs,they need to have knowledge and experience with the products... parameters and red flagging logging. Predictive maintenance interventions has been and still is a game changer.

In present age and time predictive maintenance is way to go. Vibration data collection and analysis, oil analysis, thermography etc. are some of tools used in the predictive maintenance.

Predictive maintenance is definitely helpful especially if data and manuals are available , however if there's no reference or data available in regards to equipment trouble frequency, nature of trouble, root cause analysis and life cycle, it will take time to establish and execute. Furthermore, what makes it more challenging is detecting and correcting the malpractice of both machine operators and maintenance crew which distorts the establishment of predictive maintence. On the other hand, with the use of technology to monitor the industrial equipment such as scada may help in accelerating the establishment of predictive maintenance.

Preventive maintenance and corrective maintenance both are the key for the successful operations of an equipment. Also trained staff to handle all this types of maintenances to avoid failures.

If we don't know the cause of a equipment failure so how can we troubleshoot it's fault, we have to train ourselves to find the root causes of failures and also it's remedies to skip failures.

This works, and roll out the implementation of TPM (total productive maintenance). A proven best practice is to involve line operators and train them to be the first line of defense against line breakdown as they spend more time with the equipment compared to mechanics and technicians.

Up to date trained staff is very useful for the smooth operations of a plant. And this is only possible to train and familiar them with advanced technology and also encourage them to take steps to troubleshoot a fault on his own bases.

Plant operations is a best combination of science and art since pre-commissioning to troubleshooting, emergency handlings, keeping the Personnel and equipment's safety on top priority with production targets.

Uptime can be linked to inherent design reliability. If we design our machines with reliability, availability, maintainability and safety in mind... our chances of operational success are greatly improved. Using FMEA in the design phase is worth its weight in gold. If you have to split the difference, then operating a machine in its inherent design context and capacity will yield further uptime.

Understand the SDIPF & P-F curve and apply the efforts in opportunity zone where we can establish the maximum reliability of asset or equipment. Because according to my experience many organisations not considering & understand the potential opportunities of SDIPF curve to enhance the asset reliability. Once we apply the good efforts,we need to apply preventive & predictive maintenance strategy to maintain the reliability & ofcourse enhancing the uptime of equipment, because once we lose the opportunity there is always minimum chances to improve the reliability of that particular asset or equipment, unless & until we will do the some design changes.