Preventive maintenance is the difference between the success and failure of a business regardless of size. Not only do you minimize chances of losses due to the breakdown of your assets and downtime, but you also maximize your revenues since your assets perform at their optimal level throughout their lifetime. Before you invest in EAM software for managing your maintenance, you need to build a checklist for your maintenance program.
One of the CMMS benefits includes preventive maintenance checklists. Here are the reasons you need a maintenance checklist:
Even your most experienced technician can slip up once in a while because no one is perfect. With CMMS, the end-to-end inspection process for every asset is documented. This eliminates the need for your technicians to memorize each step of the inspection process.
With a documented process, your productivity goes up, and errors are minimized.
Aging workers is a concern for every business, and replacing them is not easy. With CMMS, the entire maintenance process is documented, and new technicians will have little or no difficulty understanding the steps. You won’t have to spend a lot of time and money on the training of new technicians.
When you document all the steps, technicians don’t have to worry about forgetting or getting the inspection sequence wrong. With no confusion, the inspection process is faster.
Troubleshooting is a critical aspect of maintenance. When there is a problem with any asset, troubleshooting becomes easy since the item is on the list.
With a customized checklist, technicians can complete every task within a given timeframe. The tools and materials needed for each step can be standardized.
Since the inspections are more efficient, the equipment performance improves, and there are lesser faults and breakdowns.
To ensure that your preventive maintenance checklist is foolproof, here are the essential components:
Use a QR code for labeling the assets or systems for which you are building the checklist making the process more asset-centric and efficient.
All the tools and spare parts needed for each asset need to be documented, including replacement parts, lubricants, and personal protective equipment or PPE. Technicians will spend less time searching for tools while performing the task.
The step-by-step details of each task need to be documented in your maintenance checklist. While some checklists need the complete process, other checklists will have a pass/fail section. If any equipment or spare part fails the test, then a work order will be raised.
The checklist should have a remark or response section that provides the status of the equipment and the action to be taken. Examples of such remarks include open/complete for a lubrication task, and pass/fail for an inspection checklist.
The standard completion time for every task should be documented so that there is a benchmark for every technician. Setting the completion time also helps maintenance managers and supervisors to plan and assign tasks to workers.
The frequency of inspection should be mentioned. The technician should know if the task needs to be performed on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. Alternatively, the items on the list should have the frequency mentioned against them.
To ensure that the maintenance checklist is comprehensive, you might need to include some additional details. These include pictures of the equipment and spare parts, follow up action to be taken according to the responses, and safety warnings.
The foundation of your maintenance checklist would be the best practices for each asset and data.
Your list will depend on what you want to accomplish. Potential goals could be increasing equipment uptime, reducing the occurrence of breakdown, reduction of maintenance costs, improving safety, and minimizing fault in output. All these goals are interconnected.
Each goal will have a different priority, and your existing data will help list the goals in order of priority.
Once your goals are clear, you need to evaluate the condition of each asset. The history of each asset, including the purchase date, faults, spare parts used, and current inventory, needs to be documented.
An audit will provide information like the model of the equipment, the serial number, replacement parts required, average downtime, response time for its repairs, and maintenance cost.
The tasks and procedures for each asset are determined by federal and state regulations. These define the health and safety standards to be met at your facility, and ensuring that your equipment is in optimal working condition is an important aspect of this. These regulations need to be incorporated into your preventive maintenance checklist.
You need to check which asset or assets make the highest impact on your revenues. When building your checklist, you will need to document these assets. Apart from assets that generate the highest revenue, assets that pose the highest risk and/or are governed by state and federal regulations.
The best way to implement your maintenance program is to start with one or two assets as a test case.
The next step will be outlining the preventive maintenance against each asset, like inspection items, recurring spare parts, and lubrication. The priority and frequency of these tasks should also be mentioned. An FMEA or failure mode effects analysis will help in predicting what could go wrong and the remedy.
Once the tasks required for each asset are determined, you need to assemble your list. The checklist should have sufficient information so that technicians face no problem following it. The list could be machine-specific or cover your entire facility.
You need to discuss the checklist and explain its importance to your technicians so that there is no resistance on their part. The checklist culture might take some time to be implemented, but the effort is worth it.
Your list should be flexible, and adjustments or modifications must be made after the list has been tested. The time taken for each task may be revised based on the feedback of the technicians.
When your employees and your machines are working at optimal capacity with the maintenance checklist, you enjoy higher profits.
Build your checklist today, and watch your bottom line grow.
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