Several factors—from automation and big data to staffing shortages and culture shifts—will help guide the evolution of industrial maintenance.
These along with artificial intelligence, sensor technology and budget constraints will become the standard in factories, pushing age-old reactive practices to the wayside. But how and why did equipment maintenance practices evolve from reactive to proactive? And what changes and trends can we expect to see in the future of maintenance?
What is industrial maintenance?
Industrial maintenance is the service done by technicians or mechanics to manage machinery and equipment, increasing uptime in order to meet business objectives. It is used across multiple industries and can involve troubleshooting, fixing, and replacing equipment to improve asset performance. Implementing a strong industrial maintenance strategy can be key to enhancing the overall competitiveness of a manufacturing operation. Keeping equipment online for as long as possible leads to greater efficiency, higher profits and better operational safety for employees.
What types of industrial maintenance are there?
Like any other aspect of industry and manufacturing, industrial maintenance — also called factory maintenance— is in a continuous state of development and enhancement. As experience and knowledge of industrial maintenance best practices have grown, so too has technology evolved, combining to create more effective ways of carrying our maintenance and managing equipment.
Types of maintenance — incorporating the full spectrum of development and evolution — include:
- Reactive maintenance: Reactive maintenance addresses maintenance needs for a machine or piece of equipment when a breakdown or obvious malfunction occurs. While reactive maintenance remains a necessary component of a maintenance plan, it is the most inefficient method of maintenance due to excessive unplanned downtime.
- Preventive maintenance: Preventive maintenance involves standard tasks designed to address typical, expected upkeep and maintenance needs during the lifecycle of a component or piece of equipment. Preventive maintenance is a useful tool for avoiding preventable maintenance issues, but can also yield inefficiencies, such as investing resources in maintenance that is not required at that time.
- Predictive maintenance: Predictive maintenance incorporates data and technology to provide insights about equipment performance and facilitate early alerts of potential maintenance issues. Predictive maintenance is driven by industrial sensor technology — including vibration sensors, ultrasonic sensors and thermographic sensors. It is the next step in the evolution of maintenance — thanks to the foresight, planning and efficiency that it yields.
- Reliability-centered maintenance: Reliability-centered maintenance is the next step in the progression beyond predictive maintenance, using similar underlying sensor and data technology to enable a sharp focus on reducing unplanned downtime while increasing productivity. Reliability-centered maintenance incorporates remote monitoring, 24/7 systems and continuous data analysis to provide what is, today, the ultimate in decision-making data to keep machines operational while increasing capacity and fulfilling orders on time.
Industrial maintenance roles
Today’s industrial maintenance technology and methods call for a range of professional roles, including:
- Technicians: While sensors are generally easy to install and operate, technicians must be familiar and comfortable with the technology.
- Planners: Predictive maintenance and reliability-centered maintenance are most effective as part of a maintenance “ecosystem” — one where sensors are working in sync with one another to provide the most useful and actionable data for analysis. Planners are experts in developing and tailoring these ecosystems to yield the best results for you.
- Supervisors: Maintenance supervisors are involved in putting the pieces of technology and sensor-driven maintenance together and making decisions based on the data and analysis at hand. This is a different process than reactive maintenance or standard scheduled, preventive maintenance.
- Engineering professionals: Engineering personnel are necessary for maintenance systems design, data analysis and more.
- Data analysts/scientists: As Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet of Things become the standard throughout the manufacturing world, those who can analyze data and use it to optimize maintenance schedules become extremely important members of the team.
As technology becomes increasingly prevalent and necessary to maintain a competitive edge, capable personnel are a necessity. Combined with increased automation and streamlined operations, skilled workers and technical training programs are more important than ever.
The history of industrial maintenance
Much has happened in manufacturing and maintenance practices since the industrial revolution, but the most dramatic evolution of maintenance strategies has occurred in the last fifty years. These changes affected how industry plants have been maintained.
Before the Second World War, machinery was generally large, rugged and relatively slow running, with basic control systems and instrumentation. At this point in the history of maintenance, the demands of production were not as severe as they are today, so downtime was not as critical of an issue. When downtime did occur, it was addressed—but generally, these machines were reliable. In some older factories, machines manufactured in that period are still as good today as the day they were made.
After the war, the next stage of industrial equipment maintenance history began — the rebuilding of industry. A much more competitive marketplace developed, forcing manufacturers to increase production. The overwork of machines leads to an increase in downtime and a rise in costs to fix machines. This increase in production demanded better maintenance practices, which led to a key step in the evolution of manufacturing industry standards — the development of preventive maintenance.
Since the 1980s, plants and systems have become even more complex. The demands of the competitive marketplace and intolerance of downtime have increased, while maintenance costs have risen. Along with the demands for greater reliability, a new awareness of failure processes, improved management techniques and new technologies allowed for a broader understanding of machine and component health. The understanding of risk has become essential. Environmental and safety issues are paramount. New concepts like condition monitoring, just-in-time manufacturing, quality standards, expert systems, and reliability-centered maintenance have also emerged on the scene.
Emerging technologies shaping industrial maintenance
A number of new technologies are helping push maintenance evolution to new heights, including:
- Predictive maintenance sensors: By detecting environmental conditions, vibration and numerous other factors, these sensors provide a faster and deeper understanding of machine health throughout a facility.
- Artificial intelligence (AI): With predictive analysis driven by advanced AI algorithms, failures can be forecasted ahead of time and maintenance schedules can be optimized for maximum efficacy.
- Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT): Connecting machines across the entire production process through IIoT technology ensures real-time data collection and monitoring to help technicians see the full picture of equipment’s condition.
- Augmented reality (AR): Using AR-enabled devices allows maintenance technicians to overlay digital information onto the real world, making it easier and faster for them to troubleshoot issues and make repairs.
- Robotics and automation: Numerous automated systems are making maintenance easier and more efficient, including inspection drones, automatic lubrication systems and more.
Impact of Industry 4.0 on industrial maintenance
Maintenance organizations also have seen how Industry 4.0 principles have changed the way they perform their work. For example, digital twins enable them to practice techniques on a virtual duplicate of equipment without needing to take the actual machine offline. Every detail of the equipment is copied in a virtual environment, making it possible for maintenance teams to troubleshoot their functionality and become adept at servicing it without having to touch the actual machinery. Smart factories share detailed information about the condition of their systems so maintenance teams can plan ahead for work with greater accuracy, thanks to the implementation of cyber-physical systems. Technicians can watch the overall performance of equipment in real-time, with automated alerts letting them know the moment any piece of machinery falls out of spec. This means they can resolve problem areas before they have a chance to develop into bigger issues.
Current state of maintenance programs
Advanced Technology Services conducted a survey through a third-party source to collect data about current maintenance practices at approximately 200 manufacturing facilities. Below we list the findings – producing a snapshot of what today’s typical industrial maintenance program looks like.
Maintenance strategies: 88% of manufacturing facilities follow a preventive maintenance strategy; 52% have implemented a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS); and 51% use a run-to-failure method.
Attention to systems: Production equipment, rotating equipment (motors, power transmission, etc.) and fluid power systems (air, hydraulic, etc.) are the three areas where facilities dedicate the most maintenance support. Other areas of significant maintenance support are internal electrical distribution systems and material handling equipment.
Plans to decrease downtime: The study’s respondents reveal a variety of plans being made to reduce unscheduled downtime at their plants. 56% percent say the plants plan to upgrade their equipment; 47% plan to improve and/or increase the frequency of training; 45% intend to evolve to a PdM strategy; and 38% expect to increase their asset monitoring capabilities.
Technologies: The most common technologies facilities use to monitor/manage maintenance are CMMS (54%), in-house spreadsheets/schedules (49%), and automated maintenance schedules (44%).
Outsourcing: The study found that 88% plan to outsource some or all of their industrial maintenance operations. Among the leading causes are lack of skills among current staff and lack of time and resources for maintenance.
The common thread linking all these trends is the industry’s increased reliance on predictive analytics, automation and outsourced maintenance services. As manufacturers continue to seek out any and every advantage they can find to give them an edge against their competition, there’s no doubt that these will play an important role in industrial maintenance strategies going forward.
The future of industrial maintenance
Future implementation of maintenance systems will see greater integration of business and technical systems, with more intelligent use of collected data. They will protect users against change of personnel, with the inherent loss of their learning, and allow better-informed choices for decision makers. AI and machine learning, combined with advanced analytics, are expected to give technicians even greater capabilities when it comes to predicting equipment failures and stopping them before they occur. Predictive models and automated decision-making tools may even make it possible for problems to be identified and solved before anyone on the production floor notices anything amiss.
The use of such wide-ranging systems and sensors will allow for vast data collection, which will inevitably cause challenges with data management. This will require exceptionally trained people to run, maintain, and manage these systems and data, which may continue to be a problem if there is a lack of technical talent available. The capture of those with this specialized knowledge and the training of new people will continue to be essential for the exploitation of advanced maintenance.
Throughout the history of maintenance, it has always had the same definition. It is the management, control and execution which will ensure that design levels of availability and performance of assets are achieved in order to meet the business objectives. The issue that is driving the evolution of maintenance is that the business objectives are variable over time. They have continually changed and will continue well into the future. Only by understanding the underlying issues driving this change will we be better suited to speculate on the future of the maintenance industry. To download the 2022 state of industrial maintenance report, click here.
