Maintenance in Industry
Published on : Tuesday 01-06-2021
The second wave of the Covid pandemic, which by common consensus caught the country unaware, now appears to have reached the peak and shows signs of a downward trend. It is still too early to heave a sigh of relief as the situation remains volatile with the virus showing inclination of rapid mutation in quest of its own survival. Already experts are predicting a third wave and the government says it is prepared to face it in a more systematic manner. More worrying is the possibility that the third wave may affect the children, more so since that is the age group still outside the purview of current vaccination programmes.
Speaking of vaccination, it is a logistical challenge to vaccinate a nation of 1.3 billion, even if one considers only the adult population above the age of 18. The fact that the current vaccines available in India from three different manufacturers are all double dose vaccines to be administered with a specified gap makes the task even more complicated. At the moment, most vaccination centres are concentrating on the second dose in the absence of enough stock. The situation is likely to ease in the coming weeks and the government now says it is confident of vaccinating the entire population of the country by December 2021, but the challenges remain.
In the industrial context, maintenance is the process of keeping the machines and equipment in working condition. This is to ensure smooth production without any unexpected breakdown. While earlier most industries resorted to Corrective Maintenance where action was taken after failure has occurred, today most companies have veered to following Preventive Maintenance where action is initiated to prevent the failure by anticipating the weak points. According to a US report, about 44% of all unscheduled equipment downtimes result from aging equipment and such unscheduled downtime costs an estimated $60 billion annually, impacting 10% to 30% of production. It has been proven that incorporating a preventive strategy, the cost of failure can be reduced by as much as three-fold.
This Cover Story in this edition of Industrial Automation is on this important topic of Maintenance & MRO Services. While traditionally maintenance was regarded as a dirty and boring job to be put off as far as possible till it became inevitable, today it is increasingly viewed as critical for maintaining productivity. In this, technology is also playing a key role as most machines are now equipped with sensors that provide alerts, alarms and indicators. The data generated by sensors is also analysed in real time to learn the actual machine condition. The Cover Story has experts putting forth their views on some key questions.