Maintenance and its types
MAINTENANCE
In general, maintenance can be defined as
efforts taken to keep the condition and performance of a machine always in an
operating condition. It helps in maintaining and increasing the operational efficiency
of organization facilities.
OBJECTIVES OF MAINTENANCE
To achieve
minimum break down
To
keep a plant in good working condition at the lowest possible cost.
To
keep machines at their optimum cost without any obstacle.
To
ensure the availability of machineries, buildings and services.
To
achieve efficient functioning of machines.
To
reduce operation and maintenance cost.
TYPES OF MAINTENANCE
Maintenance can basically be divided into
two parts: planned maintenance and unplanned maintenance.
Types of Maintenance |
Planned Maintenance
In planned maintenance the maintenance
action is carried out with some fore thoughts, prior planning, record keeping
and control action. These can be further classified as :-
Preventive
maintenance
Corrective
maintenance
Predictive
maintenance
Preventive maintenance
It is defined as an action performed in
an attempt to keep the machine in a specified operating condition by means of
systematic inspection, detection and prevention of failures.
It locates weak spots in all equipment provides
them with regular inspection and minor repairs and thereby reduces the danger of
unanticipated breakdown.
Corrective maintenance
In this type, actions such as repair,
replacement, or restore will be carried out after the occurrence of a failure
in order to eliminate the source of this failure or reduce the frequency of its
occurrence.
It also includes the different types of
actions like typical adjustment of redesign equipment.
The difference between corrective
maintenance and preventive maintenance is that for the corrective maintenance,
the failure should occur before any corrective action is taken.
Predictive maintenance
As the names implies it involves the
prediction of the failure before it occurs, identifying the root cause for
those failures symptoms and eliminating those causes before they result in extensive
damage of the equipment.
Type of maintenance performed
continuously or at intervals according to the requirements to diagnose and monitor
a condition or system. Also called condition based maintenance.
Unplanned Maintenance
Maintenance action which is carried out
without any fore thoughts or prior planning is called unplanned maintenance.
In this type of maintenance the
maintenance action is executed with the help of all available maintenance
resources in least possible time, without any major time lag.
Emergency maintenance is
one of the example of unplanned maintenance. Examples are gas leakage in
chemical plant, fire hazards, breakdown of boiler, turbine etc.