Prescriptive maintenance is a growing trend in the field of equipment care. It’s considered a very thorough approach to maintenance, offering more insights than other methods. It’s becoming increasingly popular with both maintenance crews and those who manage operations.
It’s important to remember that prescriptive maintenance isn’t as common as its advantages might suggest. This is likely because many industries haven’t yet fully adopted predictive maintenance techniques.
In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at prescriptive maintenance. We’ll explore how it’s different from predictive maintenance, explain the basic steps involved, and even see some real-world examples of it in action.
What is Prescriptive Maintenance (RxM)?
Prescriptive maintenance is a new approach to managing equipment that’s changing how things are done. Instead of just predicting when problems might arise, prescriptive maintenance aims to identify the best way to fix them beforehand. This is possible because maintenance models have become more advanced. They can now consider an organization’s specific goals for production and resource use.
It uses machine learning to help fine-tune how equipment operates to achieve the desired results. It can also suggest smart ways to schedule and plan maintenance activities.
When to Use Prescriptive Maintenance?
Prescriptive maintenance can be a valuable tool for any company that uses machinery and wants to keep it running at its best. Here are a few examples of industries that find prescriptive maintenance helpful:
- Manufacturing: Factories with complex equipment can use this approach to prevent breakdowns and avoid unplanned downtime.
- Energy: Power plants can use prescriptive maintenance to optimize the performance of their turbines and generators, which helps them produce more energy with fewer problems.
- Healthcare: Hospitals can use this approach to make sure their medical equipment, like MRI machines, is always working well and less likely to break down unexpectedly.
- Transportation: Companies that move goods can use prescriptive maintenance to keep their vehicles and equipment running smoothly, which helps them avoid delays and stay on schedule.
- Oil and gas: This industry relies on reliable equipment like pumps and compressors. Prescriptive maintenance helps them keep this equipment working safely and efficiently.
- Telecommunications: Companies that provide phone and internet service can use prescriptive maintenance to optimize their networks and avoid outages.
- Aerospace and defense: This sector uses complex machinery in airplanes and other critical systems. Prescriptive maintenance can help identify and fix problems before they become serious.
Benefits of Prescriptive Maintenance
Prescriptive maintenance is a type of maintenance which can help improve efficiency by reducing the amount of unplanned downtime for equipment. By analyzing data, these tools can recommend maintenance only when necessary, streamlining the process. This takes some uncertainty out of managing equipment reliability, as prescriptive maintenance can predict when maintenance is needed. It also allows for more flexibility in scheduling maintenance tasks.
Prescriptive Maintenance Examples
Here are some situations where prescriptive maintenance can be helpful:
- Pharmaceutical cleanrooms: Keeping cleanrooms free of contamination is essential in the pharmaceutical industry, but shutting them down for maintenance can be costly. By using data from wireless vibration sensors and machine learning, prescriptive maintenance systems can identify early signs of wear in air handler bearings, like a slight change in vibration. This allows for targeted repairs before a complete breakdown occurs, preventing unexpected shutdowns.
- Wastewater Treatment Plants: Pumps are essential components of wastewater treatment facilities. Prescriptive maintenance can help here too. Sensors can monitor pump performance and collect data. This data can then be analyzed by artificial intelligence and machine learning to predict when a pump might need attention, such as repair or replacement. This allows for informed decisions based on factors like cost and potential consequences.
Tools and Requirements for a Successful Prescriptive Maintenance Program
To set up a prescriptive maintenance program that works well, there are a few key things an organization needs to have in place:
- Data collection tools: These tools help gather reliable information from equipment, which is crucial for the software to make accurate predictions.
- Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity: Sensors, equipment, and a central monitoring system need to be connected securely and reliably to share data.
- Maintenance software: Software like a CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) can connect to sensors, store data, analyze it, and even suggest maintenance tasks automatically based on predictions.
- Communication tools: Having access to reports and ways to easily communicate with team members and the maintenance software (like a CMMS) helps organizations react quickly to new recommendations.
- Security measures: Since the program relies on the Internet of Things (IoT), a strong cybersecurity system is essential to protect the collected data and communication channels.
Prescriptive Maintenance vs Predictive Maintenance
Both approaches use technology to manage equipment care but in slightly different ways. Predictive maintenance uses things like machine learning to predict when equipment might need maintenance. This helps avoid unexpected breakdowns and allows for scheduled repairs, keeping things running smoothly.
Prescriptive maintenance takes things a step further. It not only predicts problems but also offers ways to prevent them entirely or at least delay them. These systems can analyze past data and different operating conditions to suggest solutions. They can even simulate the effects of adjustments to the equipment, allowing for virtual testing of changes before making them in real life. This helps avoid costly and risky experiments on actual machines.
How NEXGEN Helps You With Maintenance?
Many industries rely on well-planned maintenance practices to keep things running smoothly. Often, the process starts with basic maintenance tasks and then progresses to using a CMMS system like NEXGEN’s to manage those tasks more effectively. This allows for a focus on preventive maintenance. As organizations gain experience, they might choose to add condition-monitoring sensors to critical equipment.
Eventually, with enough data collected, some companies bring in data specialists to create models that predict future maintenance needs.
The first step towards improved maintenance can be implementing a user-friendly and powerful CMMS solution, like NEXGEN’s cloud-based system.
Interested in seeing how NEXGEN’s CMMS can help?
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