PLANT MAINTENANCE

 Plant – is a place where men, materials, money, equipment, machinery are brought together
for manufacturing of products.
 Maintenance - is the process of keeping the machine and equipment in good working
condition.
 Plant maintenance - is a combination of actions carried out to replace, repair, and service the
machineries, components in a manufacturing plant so that it will continue to operate
satisfactorily.
 Failure – is a digress of demands of a certain quality

Problems of Plant Breakdown

 Plant breakdown creates problems such as:
1. Loss of production time.
2. Rescheduling of production.
3. Materials wastage (due to sudden stoppage of process damages in process materials).
4. Need for overtimes,
5. Need for work subcontracting.
6. Failure to recover overheads (because of loss in production hours).
7. Temporary work shortages-workers require alternative work.

Costs Associated With Equipment Failure

 These Costs are: -
1. Disrupted production schedules
2. Idle workers
3. Loss of output,
4. Damage to products or other equipment.

Objectives of Plant Maintenance

1. To minimize the loss of productive time
2. To extend the useful life of the plant, machinery and other facilities.
3. To minimize the loss due to production stoppages.
4. To ensure operational readiness of all equipment’s needed for emergency purposes at all
times such as fire-fighting equipment.
5. To efficiently use of maintenance equipment’s and personnel.
6. To ensure safety of personnel through regular inspection and maintenance of facilities.
7. To maximize efficiency and economy in production through optimum utilization of available
facilities.
8. To improve the quality of products and to improve the productivity of the plant.
9. To minimize the total maintenance cost.
10. To improve reliability, availability and maintainability.

Importance of Plant Maintenance

1. To optimize usage of plant, machinery and tools.
2. To optimize usage of manpower in maintenance.
3. To ensure smooth production flow.

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Functions of Plant Maintenance
1. Inspection
2. Repair
3. Overhaul
4. Lubrication
5. Salvage

a) Inspection
 Inspection – is the detection of faults before they develop in to breakdown of the equipment.
 Inspection involves periodic checking of machines and equipment to: -
i. Ensure safe and efficient operation,
ii. Make certain that equipment requiring work at specified periods receives proper
attention,
iii. Determination of repair feasibility
iv. Control of the quality of work accompanied by maintenance group,
 The initial symptoms of the machine trouble include: - noise, vibration, dirtiness, leak or heat
of the machine.

b) Repair
 Repair – is the process of repairing the component or replacing the item or part by another
item to restore the item in working order.
 This is done when an item or components fails or breakdown.
c) Overhaul
 In overhauling - the machine is stripped and the various parts are cleaned and oiled and
components are replaced.
d) Lubrication
 Lubrication plays a vital role in maintaining the machine accuracy and increasing its life.
 The cleaning and lubrication of the machine is normally done by the operator itself.
e) Salvage
 Any equipment is said to be salvage when it cannot be repaired or cannot be brought to
desired level of performance.
 Salvage item is to be replaced by new one to bring back the system into operation.

Types of Maintenance Practices

1. Reactive Maintenance/ Corrective or breakdown maintenance
2. Preventive Maintenance
3. Scheduled Maintenance
4. Predictive maintenance

REACTIVE MAINTENANCE
 Reactive maintenance is also known as: -
 Corrective Maintenance
 Break Down Maintenance.
 It involves all unscheduled actions performed as a result of system or product failure.
 This approach is mainly a response to machine breakdowns.
 This method is unpredictable in nature and it can easily cause disruptions to the production
process.
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Causes of Breakdown
1. Failure to replace the worn-out parts
2. Lack of lubrication
3. Neglected cooling system
4. Carelessness towards minor repairs - e.g. equipment vibrations, unusual sounds coming
out of the rotating machinery, equipment getting too much heated up, etc.
5. External factors - such as too low or too high line voltage, wrong fuel, etc.

Procedure for Breakdown Maintenance

 It involves the following steps
1. Failure identification,
2. Localization and isolation,
3. Disassembly,
4. Item removal and replacement or repair in place,
5. Reassembly
6. Checkout and condition verification.

Advantages of Breakdown Maintenance

1. Involves low cost investment for maintenance.
2. Less staff is required.

Disadvantages of Breakdown Maintenance

1. Production is affected – either delayed or stopped
2. Leads to hurried maintenance - this results into poor quality maintenance
3. The plant depreciates very fast
4. Cost of maintenance is high – as down time cost and replacement cost will be high
5. Leads to direct loss of profit
6. Leads to increased accidents
7. More wastage of material
8. Not suitable for equipments like cranes, boilers, lifts, hoists etc.

PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE
 Preventive Maintenance - is the prevention of equipment breakdowns before it happens.
 It is performed periodically in order to reduce the incidence of equipment failure and the
costs associated with it.
 Preventive maintenance includes: -
i. Inspections,
ii. Adjustments,
iii. Regular service
iv. Planned shutdowns.
 It is a method of maintenance aimed at avoiding or preventing breakdowns.

Objectives of Preventive Maintenance

1. To minimize the possibility of unanticipated break downs
2. To make plant and machines always available for ready use.
3. To retain the value of the equipment
4. To maintain optimum productivity

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5. To maintain the accuracy of the machineries
6. To reduce work content during maintenance
7. To ensure safety to workmen

Procedure for Preventive Maintenance

This involves
i. Maintaining machine Records
ii. Preparing Inspection checklist
iii. Inspection as per check list
iv. Taking a corrective action

1. Maintaining Machine Records

 To carry out the preventive maintenance effectively all the details about the machines should
be kept in records.
 These details are
 Type of equipment and description
 Name of the manufacturer
 Cost and date of the purchase
 Cost and date of planned repairs
 Breakdowns if any and their dates and reasons
 List of spare parts and their code numbers

2. Preparing Inspection Checklist

 The components to be inspected on regular intervals are listed i.e. what are to be inspected
daily/ weekly/ monthly are listed.
3. Inspection as per check list and corrective action
 Inspection and corrective action can be done as follows
i. Routine up-keep - adjustment of guide plates, lubrication and cleaning
ii. Periodic inspection – Visual inspection – Overhauls, scheduled replacements etc.
 These maintenance works are done without disturbance to the production activities.
 In preventive maintenance, the cost of maintenance will be high because
i. Many people are involved in inspection, record keeping and maintenance work.
ii. More number of spare parts are stocked.
iii. The parts are replaced before the end of their life.

Advantages of Preventive Maintenance

1. Reduced break downs and down time
2. Lesser overtime to maintenance people
3. Grater safety to workers
4. Low maintenance and repair cost
5. Less stand –by equipment needed.
6. Reduced production cost
7. Increased equipment life
8. Increase workers morale – as no stoppage of work.
9. Better product Quality
10. Less material wastages.

Disadvantages of Preventive Maintenance

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 1. Catastrophic failures still likely to occur.
2. Labor intensive.
3. Includes performance of unneeded maintenance.
4. Potential for incidental damage to components in conducting unneeded maintenance.

Scheduled Maintenance
 Maintenance is done according to the recommendation of the supplier of the equipment.
 This is usually done at predetermined dates.
 In this maintenance, the plant is shut down and following are done
i. Inspection,
ii. Repairing and
iii. Replacing of worn out parts

Planned Maintenance
 Maintenance activities are well planned.
 The following details are planned:
i. Time of maintenance
ii. Material (Spare parts) requirement.
iii. Men requirement
iv. Maintenance tools and equipment needed.
v. Allocation of work to maintenance people.
vi. Estimated cost
 The maintenance plan is prepared for a group of equipment and machineries.

Predictive Maintenance
 Predictive maintenance – measurements are taken to determine the condition of the machine
and determine if repair is necessary.
 It allows the problems then to be eliminated or controlled before any deterioration in the
component physical state.
 Predictive maintenance techniques are designed to help determine the condition of in-service
equipment in order to predict when maintenance should be performed.
 Maintenance need is based on the actual condition of the machine rather than on some preset
schedule.

Advantages of Predictive maintenance

1. Increased component operational life/availability.
2. Decrease in equipment or process downtime.
3. Decrease in costs for parts and labor.
4. Better product quality.
5. Improved worker and environmental safety.
6. Energy savings.
7. There is cost savings over preventive maintenance program.

Disadvantages of Predictive maintenance

1. Increased investment in diagnostic equipment.
2. Increased investment in staff training.
3. Savings potential not readily seen by management.

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Bathtub Curve
 Bathtub curve - describes the cost of equipment over its lifespan i.e. from commissioning to winding
up.

 It comprises of three parts:

1. Early Life of a Product
2. Mid-Life of a Product
3. Late Life of the Product

Early Life of a Product

 In the early life of a product, the failure rate is high but rapidly decreasing as defective products are
identified and discarded.
 The early sources of potential failure are eliminated.
 This region is known as
 The Early Failure Period or
 The Infant Mortality Period
 Early failures - The Failure Rate is decreasing
 This decreasing failure rate typically lasts several weeks to a few months.

Mid-Life of a Product
 In the mid-life of a product - the failure rate is low and constant.
 The failure rate remains roughly constant for the majority of the useful life of the product.
 This region is known as
 The Intrinsic Failure Period or
 The Stable Failure Period
 Random failures

 The failure rate is a constant

 Note that most systems spend most of their lifetimes operating in this flat portion of the bathtub
curve

Late Life of the Product

 The failure rate increases, as age and wear take place on the product.
 The failure rate begins to increase as materials wear out and degradation failures occur at an ever
increasing rate.
 This is the Wear-out Failure Period - failure rate is increasing.

Advantages of Good Maintenance

1. Life of machinery and equipments are increased
2. Production takes place as per the schedule.

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3. Products are delivered to customers in time and hence high level of customer satisfaction can
be expected
4. Machines are in good condition. Hence quality of the products will be good.
5. No production loss
6. Machinery is not damaged
7. No idle time of men and machines. Hence their utility increases

Disadvantages of Poor Maintenance

1. Machines may be damaged. This is a loss
2. Poorly maintained machines will produce poor quality products
3. More wastage of materials.
4. Break down of machines makes both men and machine in idle position. So production time is
wasted. This will increase cost of production
5. Poor maintenance cause accidents.
6. Due to poor maintenance, life of machine is reduced.
7. If a part of equipment goes out of order in a flow production factory, then the entire
production line will soon come to halt. This leads to heavy loss in productivity as well as
monetary loss.

Maintenance Policy & Repair

 Maintenance Policy – defines the approaches towards maintenance of the plant.

Factors to consider before choosing the maintenance policy

 There are:
i. Risks of failure
ii. Maintenance costs
iii. Asset performance
iv. Asset reliability

Types of Maintenance Policies

 There are three different maintenance policies to choose from:
1. Use-based maintenance
2. Failure-based maintenance
3. Condition-based maintenance

1. Use-based maintenance - is maintenance that is triggered by time, or event e.g. changing the oil in
your car every 3,000 miles.
2. Failure-based maintenance - refers to running an asset to failure. Maintenance is done after plant
failure.
3. Condition-based maintenance - is a maintenance policy that assesses the actual condition of an asset
to determine whether maintenance needs to be done.

Significance of the Maintenance Policy

 Maintenance policy ensures that
1. Equipments are always in ready and reliable condition.
2. Equipments are always calibrated.
3. There are no major breakdowns.
4. Costs are always controlled.

Lack of an effective maintenance policy results in: -

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 1. Full capacity utilization may not be achieved.
2. Increase in production cost as fixed labor cost cannot be reduced.
3. Increase in maintenance cost as more spare parts are required.
4. Reduction in product quality and increase in wastage.
5. Safety of workers and operators in jeopardy.

Maintenance Department
 Maintenance department is responsible with planning and scheduling of maintenance.
 Planning and scheduling needs to ensure that production is not disturbed.

Duties of Maintenance Department

1. Identifying the equipment for maintenance and technique for maintenance.
2. Categorizing maintenance into routine, priority and emergency.
3. Planning maintenance considering cost, time, space etc.
4. Planning for material requirements for maintenance.
5. Budgeting time and money requirements.

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