Many businesses rely heavily on technology in the running of their day to day business functions. While everyone knows regular maintenance of machines and systems is key to a successful, smooth sailing business operation, remembering to carry out such maintenance can be difficult when you’ve got new and on-going thoughts constantly floating in and out. This is where routine maintenance can help businesses stay on top of machine and system servicing.
‘Routine maintenance’ is maintenance activities that occur on a regular basis, that can be completed daily, weekly, monthly, or even annually – activities such as machine servicing. Contributing to preventive maintenance; its purpose is to complete a task that’s planned on a regular basis to reduce the need for emergency maintenance. A successful maintenance routine can increase a machine’s output quality and life expectancy, ultimately helping to avoid downtime and preventing problems before they occur.
The top three reasons a business faces downtime are; ageing equipment, mechanical failure, and operational error. All three can be avoided with routine maintenance, which can reduce business downtime between 30% and 50%.
Here are the four types of routine maintenance:
Time Based Maintenance (TBM)
This type replaces parts at agreed and fixed intervals, no matter the condition. It’s commonly used for service lines that suffer from failure due to age-related reasons, which cannot always be predicted by staff and where the age varies, therefore increasing the chance of a business facing downtime.
Failure Finding Maintenance (FBM)
The role of failure-finding maintenance is to discover failures within equipment that are hidden. This, too, takes place at fixed intervals, preventing equipment shutdown and adds an increase to safety for staff who utilise the equipment. It’s mostly used for equipment such as safety valves.
Risk Based Maintenance (RBM)
This type is decided around the risk level of the equipment failing. By assessing the chance of each equipment failing and the severity of damage caused, a scale will be created and the equipment with the highest risk will be positioned at the top and the lower the risk the further down the list the equipment will be.
Condition Based Maintenance (CBM)
Lastly, this involves monitoring the equipment, inspecting for signs of damage or problems, and acting appropriately for the problem to maintain the machines health.
It can all seem overwhelming and confusing when deciding on what’s best for your type of business but don’t be alarmed, contact our experts with any further questions or queries.
