True
Preventative Maintenance (TPM)
What
is preventative / preventive maintenance?
By definition
Preventative
Maintenance is method of conducting repairs by outside or in-house
maintenance personnel with the sole purpose of maintaining equipment in safe
operating condition by providing a systematic plan involving detection of
defects through use of inspections that also include adjustments, lubrication,
cleaning, minor repairs and resetting of parts or components to manufacturers
original specifications. By utilizing the inspection information to preform
planned repairs to prevent further failures from occurring.
The
Problem with the Preventative Maintenance Term (PM)
The Problem with the
Preventative Maintenance term is that in the real world especially in the world
of maintenance service providers and the service repair industry, maintenance
contractors don't practice what they preach necessarily.
What I really mean by
this is that service providers will promise to provide an inspection that will
include small maintenance, repairs, adjustments, cleaning, lubrication, etc...
but often don't actually execute this "prevention" portion of the
work! Often times it is intentional not to address the items during
inspection so that the anticipated break downs will occur, thus benefiting the
service company for billable hours, parts and business opportunities for the
service companies to keep the cash machine rolling.
Disagree? Some
equipment owners might disagree with what I just said but ask youreself this
one question: "Is the same company that performs the inspections also doing the service work after the
inspections? Then here lies the problem.
80-90%
of the service providers who perform the inspections are awarded the repair
work after the inspections are finished. As a former sales representative
for overhead crane service providers who was told to go mainly after the
inspection business opportunities so that the service company can look for
other repairs to do, I always felt that it was a direct conflict of
interest. In fact some service providers will give the inspections away
on cost but make it up on the repairs later. This is not how preventative
maintenance should be used against the equipment owners.
True
Preventative Maintenance is Trackable and Monitored Maintenance
The only way to ensure
that you as an equipment owner will get the best dollar value for the repairs
on your equipment is to keep track of all maintenance records for
starters. This extremely valuable
information is what the service companies use to identify short term problems,
medium term problems and long term problems in order to plan for future service
work.
Equipment owner must
also understand, learn and be open minded enough to see that there is ways to
control maintenance better and that is with a sound
Maintenance
Optimization Strategy
Know
and Understand the Maintenance Service Industry
In this day and age
the more successful companies that own overhead cranes, hoists, fork-lifting
equipment and many other Material Handling Equipment (MHE) types will learn,
adapt and implement methods to beat "the grip the service providers have"
on information control as it relates to maintenance.
The better you keep track and understand your
maintenance the less likely your service provider will be able to hide
information and keep you in the dark when it comes to preventative maintenance
issues.
What
Equipment Manufacturers and Service Companies are saying?
After I spent years in
business, promoting and presented my philosophy and software products like
MHEControl.com
to various companies many overhead crane manufacturers and service providers
have said to me:
"Bill we count on our customers to have
break downs that's how we make money!"
This notion of
allowing equipment owners to have anticipated or expected break downs so that
service companies can simply make more money is totally unacceptable!
Inclosing there would
be no need for writing this article in the first place if the service industry
would hold true to what they said and delivered a preventative maintenance
promises and better yet there would be no need to come up with another term to
define something that is more accurate or having a more truthful term such as
"True Preventative Maintenance."
----------------------------------------------------
Article by: Bill Hallett, President and expert in Overhead Cranes.
Bill
specializes in implemention of true preventative maintenance programs
for crane owners and is also an overhead crane maintenance and parts
specialist for over 16 years. Bill has also created his very own
Maintenance Optimization software for overhead cranes called:MHEControl
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