Optimize Control System with Preventative Maintenance

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Ensuring equipment integrity by conducting thorough maintenance provides multiple benefits for your operation, from maximizing machine uptime and minimizing process shutdowns, to prolonged equipment lifespan and safety. This is true and well understood in the industry when it comes to mechanical equipment. Yet, when it comes to controls and monitoring systems, opportunities to improve abound.

Maintenance approach

A plant’s equipment maintenance approach typically falls into one of two categories: reactive maintenance and preventive maintenance.

Reactive maintenance

refers to repairs made upon equipment failure. Reactive maintenance takes place when a business chooses to wait for a pipe to burst or a part to fail before taking action. It is waiting for a compressor’s performance to degrade so far that it’s no longer able to support its downstream companions before studying the cause of the degradation. Thus, reactive maintenance doesn’t prevent subsequent safety and monetary consequences — it’s simply waiting for a negative consequence before taking action.

Reactive maintenance comes with a number of negative consequences — scrambling to find a replacement from spare stock, or ordering a replacement from a supplier, which can result in long lead times or exorbitant expediting fees, all headaches compounded by the fact that as you wait, losses are stacking up quickly due to lack of production. Reactive maintenance really isn’t maintenance at all; rather, it is constantly living on the verge of a potential catastrophe.