Every industry relies on the functionalities of their assets- which collectively amounts to thousands in numbers per factory. Regardless of your industrial establishment’s type or size, two things are certain; you immensely require the deployment of assets and secondly, all assets decay or wear off inevitably. This is why you must be critically aware from the ground up about optimal ways of maintaining your industrial asset spread. With industry 4.0-specific technological waves surfacing the industrial world, asset maintenance too was transmuted to be precise and more advanced. Predictive Maintenance (PdM), even though it emerged a while back, was most vaunted after the advent of industry 4.0 specific conversations were buzzing on the internet. Today we are gearing up to provide you with a well-tailored article about what a Predictive Maintenance System is and why this technological solution is essential for your industrial consortium.

A peek at overall Industrial Maintenance Strategies

What is the maintenance strategy that suits your organisation? It is true that there are a number of types of maintenance strategies used by asset managers of the industrial world for the past dozens of decades, but how can Predictive Maintenance be discreetly margined out to be the best maintenance strategy? Before we focus on the sophisticated features and benefits of Predictive Maintenance, let us quickly peruse the types of asset maintenance strategies that are commonly available- the list flows in alphabetical order for the reader’s convenience.

  1. Condition-based Maintenance
    Maintaining the assets based on their conditions require real-time or planned monitoring of their performances to determine when the maintenance arrangements must be scheduled. It indicates instances where the asset is critical and necessitates maintenance programs before it results in a breakdown. It still lacks the unpredictability of maintenance periods and also results in asset fatigue since it waits for near-zero asset burn out.

  2. Corrective Maintenance
    This is a rogue asset maintenance technique, that is because it urges for maintenance only after the routine inspectors suggest corrective measures when they see asset discrepancies “by chance”. For instance, corrective maintenance strategies are initiated when the inspectors see an issue in a routine check or condition-based monitoring shows unusual performance statistics or when a piece of equipment collapses during operation (which is unhealthy).

  3. Predictive Maintenance
    Predictive Maintenance Strategy (PdM) is the latest and most apt asset maintenance strategy before prescriptive maintenance. It employs hi-tech analytical and asset condition-surveillance gadgets and techniques to ideally predict maintenance programs only when needed- which saves time, money, and effort also refrains needless wearing off or inefficient deployment of industrial equipment. Predictive Maintenance solutions foster real-time asset monitoring protocols and AI models and asset profiles to monitor the concurrent asset conditions. It analyses work order data and benchmarks the maintenance, repair and operation (MRO) inventory usages so that no maintenance program will be flawed in any possible manner. It eliminates needless maintenance costs, narrows down the downtime periods and allows the company to invest only on sufficient spare parts, supplements and supplies based on actual asset decaying. The most admirable feature of Predictive Maintenance Strategy is its propensity to predict failures and asset waning patterns sheerly based on asset and operation data. Competent Predictive Maintenance Systems can predict asset conditions 10 years ahead and provide asset-specific failure profiles and future-investment data that scientifically prove asset fiascoes before they happen. It will suggest the most cost-efficient investments to either maintain or replace the asset too. It can maintain overall asset spreads- spanning from colossal asset-heavy plants or sites to a single piece of equipment- depending on the corporate requirements.

  4. Prescriptive Maintenance
    This maintenance strategy is indicated as the latest maintenance strategy in the Big Data framework; it extends the functionality of Predictive Maintenance for it predicts the situation and then prescribes the highly-recommendable maintenance protocols based on real-time outcomes. But this method is still at its initial stages, for it is experimented by experienced analysts for precise and successful adoption. It can add its functionality to a new level by advising the maintenance crew on what can be done by exploiting the data generated by the AI and ML models uprooted in the systems.

  5. Preventive Maintenance (based on Time or usage)
    This maintenance strategy is positioned between the Run-to-Fail Maintenance Strategy and the Predictive Maintenance Strategy in terms of strategic complexity. It is an expensive maintenance protocol that necessitates regular maintenance programs on every asset to narrow down its possibility of failing. It ensures unprecedented breakdowns won’t occur, and such maintenance routines can be planned based on operative time or the number or degree of using the particular assets. If not optimally executed, it can oversee random or unrelated malfunctions and won’t succeed in serving critical functions.

  6. Reactive Maintenance
    This method is like a team of firefighters, for it reacts after the damage has been done to the asset, which is why this method is also labelled as the ‘Breakdown Maintenance’. This maintenance effort is a perilous method of maintaining your assets. It can lead to elongated system downtime phases; this is the method used by an organisation with no predetermined maintenance strategy for its assets.

  7. Routine Maintenance
    As the name suggests, this maintenance strategy is a planned set of tasks and check-ups that are previously scheduled by the asset managers and maintenance technicians to investigate, identify and prevent asset-centric issues.

  8. Run-to-fail Maintenance
    This maintenance strategy deliberately allows the assets to fail during operation; utilises the asset until it reaches its limits and repairs after it collapses or fails. But unlike in the reactive maintenance method, this strategy ensures that the maintenance team is readily available to repair the asset without further ado. It’s like waiting for a bulb to burn out while keeping spare bulbs stand-by.

Why is Predictive Maintenance Strategy the best alternative in the Industrial context?

As explained above, the predictive maintenance strategy capitalised asset data and historical data to proactively forecast asset failing and decaying behaviours with scientifically proven data. It can analyse when an asset must be either maintained or replaced at the most cost-efficient and convenient moment for the asset managers and investors. It supplies non-destructive maintenance protocols that would benefit the asset health and the industrial practitioner at the same time.

Predictive Maintenance can be portrayed as the most competent asset maintenance technique because its architecture harnesses authentic data patterns to:

  • monitor the real-time conditions if industrial assets,
  • evaluate the assets’ lifecycles,
  • foreshadow prognostics for asset failures,
  • provide a reliable basis to support the asset-centric decisions of a company.

This type of maintenance strategy can serve to maintain and manage any type of asset class at any scale because Asset Predictive Maintenance solutions are empowered with modern technologies that allow a collective analysis of asset networks’ performance under one glass pane.

A Predictive Maintenance Solution will allow you to tackle scientifically-scaffolded data insights rather than guesstimating when a machine will deteriorate until it becomes completely obsolete. Let us look at instances where Predictive Maintenance Solutions become significantly important to your industrial site.

The industrially impactful importance of Predictive Maintenance Solutions

Not-to-be-missed predictive technologies for different asset categories

Predictive Maintenance Solutions take one key factor into consideration when estimating the asset deterioration rates, that is, ‘the nature of decaying’. Predictive Maintenance solutions can be equipped with the latest technologies by analysing the nature of decaying and the required type of maintenance against the asset categories. Depending on the quintessence of the asset, the pattern of decaying and its respective industry- it can be Automotive, Oil and Gas, Transportation, precise manufacturing, ports, airline etc. -, the predictive maintenance solutions can house the following technologies to provide better maintenance-related solutions:

  • Acoustic Monitoring,
  • Corona Detection Technology,
  • Infrared Thermography,
  • Modelling and Simulation.
  • Neural Networks,
  • Oil Analysis,
  • Sound Level Measurements,
  • Vibration Analysis, and more.

Efficiency maximised on many levels.

There are so many advantages of Predictive Maintenance Solution because it transfers the maintenance work of industrial assets to the digital world. It increases the usable machine lifespan because it provides the needful guidance to keep the asset up and running under better conditions. By doing so, it will:

  • Add up production hours due to highly efficient machine operation
  • Ascertain asset maintenance safety and readiness to execute programs
  • Ensure elongated asset uptimes
  • Improve the reliability of industrial asset spreads even in the most complex environments
  • Make cutbacks in the probability of unplanned asset breakdowns
  • Well-manage the maintenance costs efficiently and more.

Reduces Waste, Scrap and dispensable maintenance expenditures

As this technological solution detects sub-optimal performance of assets, it redefines wasteful production systems to be waste-free production systems. Energy, raw materials and labour costs per machine will slim down because this solution uncovers issues in the uneventful waste generation before it even occurs. Secondly, it can also pluck out the inefficiencies behind executing maintenance programs when they are not needed at all. Predictive Maintenance Solutions can prioritise the most critical assets and notify technicians to look at them before needlessly diagnosing healthy assets.

Predictive Maintenance makes the manufacturer happy.

The manufacturing custodians and investors can use the insightful information of Predictive Maintenance Systems to transparently induce asset investment proposals and maintenance schedules without any dispute. This solution disallows any kind of fraudulent activity when proportioning the budget for asset maintenance or renewals. This is because the Predictive Maintenance Solutions propels in enabling comprehensive views on how, why and when the organisation’s asset/s must be replaced or maintained. This allows the manufacturer to be satisfied with seamless asset utilisation and doubt-free asset management and maintenance protocols.

Secondly, Predictive Maintenance makes customers happy.

With optimistic asset adoption in your industrial factories, plants or sites would never function substandardly. The machine learning models geared into this solution initiate a virtuous cycle of keeping track of KPIs, learnings and experimentations of the best asset deployment strategies that can help you meet client demands optimally. These revelations render in adjusting machine parameters to improve the quality and quantity of your production to meet client satisfactory standards.

Is Cerexio geared up to offer a Predictive Maintenance Solution for your company?

Cerexio is the most admired and trusted Software Solution Enabler and is definitely equipped by experts as the best predictive maintenance solution. Cerexio Predictive Maintenance System allows the user to accoutre with the best modern technologies to maintain and manage their diverse asset spread under one virtual roof. With the best compliance, safety and effective featural modules in this product, industrial giants can easily find this IT solution as the last stop to eliminate all their asset-centric mismanagements. Connect with our team to learn more.

Hence, Predictive Maintenance is a crucial choice in the industrial context

Predictive Maintenance Strategies are indispensable, most apt and trendy maintenance approaches for any asset-dependent industry. This is why Predictive Maintenance is never the wrong choice for any industrial practitioner. The value-added features enabled by Predictive Maintenance Solutions for industrial corporations are significant and mandatory to confidently invest in modern capital investments like smart buildings, smart factories, modern oil refineries, critical road and water infrastructures and more. The future, as we see it, will keep modernising and digitally proliferating our industrial establishments and efforts, making the industrial world rely on industry 4.0 approaches such as Predictive Maintenance Systems. We hope you will use this knowledge to better understand why Industrial Experts and enterprise-level, asset-bound conglomerates rely on Predictive Maintenance Solutions to ensure their asset networks’ health is reassured and smart asset financial decisions are effectuated at the right time.