What Is Equipment Maintenance?

Equipment maintenance (maintenance): The combination of equipment repair and maintenance. In order to prevent equipment performance degradation or reduce the probability of equipment failure, technical management measures are carried out according to a predetermined plan or the corresponding technical conditions.

Equipment maintenance

Equipment maintenance (Equipment service, maintenance):

If the maintenance and repair of equipment is started only when problems occur, it will lead to low production capacity and quality, and lose competitiveness.

Therefore, it is necessary to determine some basic ideas for maintenance, and then group them:

The basic methods are as follows:

1. Post-mortem maintenance (BM: Breakdown Maintenance)

2. Preventive Maintenance (PM: Prevention Maintenance)

3. Production Maintenance (PM: Productive Maintenance)

4. Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)

5. Predictive Maintenance (PdM: Predictive Maintenance)

6. Condition Based Maintenance (CBM: Condition Based Maintenance)

In Japan, the gradual process of equipment management is divided into the following 5 stages:

(1) Post-event maintenance in the first stage

Prior to 1950, BM (Breakdown Maintenance) was performed.

The idea is: wait until it breaks and then repair, even now, when the stop loss of production equipment can be ignored, you can also take the post-maintenance program. If repairs happen unexpectedly, it is difficult to plan ahead. Therefore, it is easy to be detrimental to the allocation and arrangement of personnel, materials and equipment. However, from the perspective of productivity to comprehensiveness, if this efficiency can be ignored, after-the-fact maintenance can be used.

In addition, when the mean time between failures (MTBF) is not constant, the mean time between repairs (MTTR) is short, and it is costly to exchange parts regularly. In this case, maintenance can be taken afterwards.

(2) Second stage preventive maintenance

Preventive Maintenance (PM) was introduced to the United States around 1950.

This method is performed before the equipment fails.

Preventive maintenance is a method adopted to prevent equipment downtime caused by sudden failure. It is a maintenance method that replaces a component or a unit according to economical intervals.

The interval between preventive maintenance is determined according to the size or life of the equipment. It can be regularly inspected, repaired, or overhauled once a year, once every six months, once a month, or once a week.

Preventive maintenance can be uneconomical if too much.

Set up a preventive maintenance plan after comprehensive discussions based on the cost of after-the-fact repairs or the completion of the productivity and production goals and the rate of operation.

(3) Phase 3 production maintenance

In the 1960s, production maintenance (PM) was considered. This is the most economical and good way to ensure the productivity of your equipment. This method is a method of combining the cost (LCC: life cycle cost) of the equipment or the cost of maintaining the equipment operation with the deterioration of the equipment and Justification, and then determining how to maintain it.

There are two ways and ideas:

1. Improved maintenance (CM: correct maintenance)

In order to make the maintenance and repair of the equipment easier, furthermore, in order to make the equipment improvement without repair and maintenance, that is, to improve the technical improvement of the equipment by improving and improving the productivity of the equipment.

2. Maintenance prevention (MP: maintenance prevention)

In order to reduce the maintenance cost of the equipment fundamentally, instead of just considering how to maintain it, it is better to make maintenance-free equipment when it is manufactured or purchased. This idea can maximize the smooth and economical deployment and maintenance of equipment, which is called maintenance prevention.

(4) Phase 4 T PM

Since 1970, it has entered into a company-wide total productive maintenance (TPM) which includes small group activities composed of operators autonomously.

In the year 1971, Denso published an article entitled Maintenance for all employees (

1. Develop equipment use procedures

2. Strengthening maintenance work as planned

3 Develop equipment operation and maintenance procedures

4 Establish equipment use responsibility system

5. Establish equipment maintenance system

1) Cleaning: Not only the surface, but also the corner horns should be cleaned up so that the equipment, tooling wear, noise, looseness, deformation, leakage and other defects are exposed and eliminated in time

2) Lubrication: Poor lubrication caused by low oil and fat deficiency makes the equipment operate abnormally, some parts are excessively worn, the temperature is too high, resulting in reduced hardness, wear resistance, and even thermal fatigue and coarse grain damage. Should be regular, quantitative, qualitative, timely refueling, fatting;

3) Tightening: Tighten bolts and nuts to avoid failures caused by parts loosening, vibration, sliding, and falling off;

4) Plugging: prevent and block the leakage of lubricating grease, compressed air, steam, water, cooling medium, cold air and heat.