DEFINITION 

Industrial maintenance is defined in 2001 by the AFNOR (French Association for Standardization) NF-X 60,000 standard, is "the set of all technical, administrative and management actions during the life cycle of an asset, intended to maintain it or restore it to a state in which it can perform the required function."

It therefore encompasses a range of administrative / management / technical actions, including prevention, maintenance, troubleshooting, revision & verification, repair, control & diagnosis of material devices, while aspiring to the improvement of industrial mechanisms .

Costs related to emergency repairs, equipment lifespan, unplanned production downtime and energy costs are each factors that can be influenced by good industrial maintenance management.

ROLE & OBJECTIVES

The place of maintenance is increasingly central to the activity and productivity of companies. Nowadays, maintenance activities no longer only aim to repair equipment but also to anticipate breakdowns and malfunctions. As the saying goes: “Prevention is better than cure!”.

The objectives of maintenance revolve around four main principles:

1. Reliability,
2. Maintenability,
3. Availibility,
4. Quality.

The role of a maintenance department is therefore broader today than before, and managers and technicians must integrate numerous parameters such as cost and deadlines, quality, safety and the environment. 

Systematic preventive maintenance is carried out according to a schedule, depending on time or the number of units of use, but without prior inspection of the asset.

The frequency of interventions is established from the start of operation of the equipment or following a partial or complete overhaul of it. It is distinguished by its periodicity.

Its primary purpose is twofold: to minimize the probability of failure and to guarantee constant performance of machines and systems. On the other hand, to be optimal, it must be associated with conditional maintenance so as not to create additional costs, for example.

EXAMPLES OF APPLICATION : Support for the preparation / conditioning of equipment for an AT intervention, support for the start-up of installations, dismantling & replacement of static or dynamic sealing elements, filtration cartridges, control and adjustment of stroke dynamic sealing equipment, adjustment of flow rates of user point valves, I/O control test on control panel (Delta V), resistance and isolation tests of electric motor windings, etc...

Conditional preventive maintenance is based on monitoring of the installation based on a predefined type of event (self-diagnosis, sensor information, etc.). It is characterized by its reactivity to the degradation of equipment.

It uses information collected in real time, using techniques such as visual inspection, vibration monitoring, tribology or infrared thermography, with the aim of intervening at the moment the asset has crossed the wear threshold or deterioration set in advance by the manufacturer.

It’s about carrying out the right operation at the right time, for better cost control.

EXAMPLES OF APPLICATION : Collection of documentary gaps, recommendations based on failure modes & causes, diagnosis and 3D modeling of utility networks, routine inspections with non-destructive testing (NDT) such as thermography on plumbing network valves. steam, tightening torque measurement, etc.

According to the AFNOR definition, predictive maintenance is “conditional maintenance carried out by following the forecasts extrapolated from the analysis and evaluation of significant parameters of the degradation of the asset”.

It consists of anticipating maintenance needs by preventing breakdowns or failures. This is maintenance 4.0, with continuous monitoring of changes in certain parameters, thresholds, different data (CMMS software, etc.), allowing precise management to trigger the right intervention based on all the parameters.

EXAMPLES OF APPLICATION : Surely full of beautiful things based on data monitoring coupled with algorithms and weighting factors. But for this, do not hesitate to consult specialized companies 😁

Palliative maintenance corresponds to troubleshooting. It consists of temporarily restoring a machine or tool to normal condition, pending its repair. It does not aim to resolve the root cause of the problem. Palliative maintenance makes it possible to avoid a total shutdown of production; we then speak of resumption of production in “degraded” mode. This is a temporary solution!

This solution is used as an emergency measure to avoid business risk. It gives maintenance teams time to plan a more in-depth and complete intervention, of a curative type.

Repair: Physical actions performed to allow an asset to perform its required function for a limited time until repair is performed.

EXAMPLES OF APPLICATION : it starts from the piece of chewing gum 😆 ... But more seriously, it can be the installation of a hose to direct it to a safe place, the placement of a repair sleeve around a leak in a pipe, etc...

Curative maintenance repairs the causes and consequences of the breakdown. Unlike palliative maintenance, this is an in-depth action that acts over the long term, often by replacing the defective part with a new one. The equipment then resumes normal production.

This is the most widespread and widely used type of industrial maintenance strategy: simple to apply and a perfect complement to preventive maintenance.

Repair: Physical actions performed to restore the required function of a broken asset.

EXAMPLE OF APPLICATION : Failure diagnosis via expert assessment, correction of ranges and other operating plans (OT, BOM, etc.), reconditioning following a failure of mechanical elements of dynamically sealed equipment