First of all, one needs to understand what does emergency maintenance actually means? Whenever any normal functions or operations of any asset or equipment gets interrupted due to unexpected failure or breakdown, these unexpected failures cause damage to asset as well as overall system. It requires immediate action to be taken to prevent it from becoming worse and affecting production, safety of employees, functions of organizations, etc. Emergency maintenance simply includes coordination of team members and repair of equipment following failure or breakdown regardless of its causes. Main causes that lead to emergency maintenance can be removed or resolved permanently but one can try to reduce its impact and chances of occurrence of other risks or failure that are associated with it. Methods : There are several methods with help of which one can reduce load of emergency maintenance. Out of which, one of best ways is to implement proactive maintenance strategy. This proactive maintenance strategy generally identifies potential failures and then resolve such emergency failures before it gets converted into major problems that cannot be controlled. Nowadays, there are many proactive maintenance strategies available. One can choose most appropriate one according to their environment, situation, budget, etc. Different proactive maintenance strategies that one can implement are as given below :
- Preventive Maintenance : Preventive maintenance is a maintenance strategy that aims at keeping assets up and running without any interruption. To achieve this aim, preventive maintenance requires regular checkups and maintenance of assets on regular basis. This maintenance simply prevents assets from unexpected failure or breakdown.
- Condition-based Maintenance (CBM) : CBM is a maintenance strategy that aims at keeping assets up and running without any interruption but only when required. Such type of maintenance is only performed on basis of present condition of equipment and whether or not maintenance is required. This maintenance simply avoids unnecessary maintenance and saves money.
- Predictive Maintenance (PdM) : PdM is a maintenance strategy that aims to keep assets up and running without any interruption simply predicting that when assets might fail or break so that maintenance action can be taken to prevent failure from occurrence. Such type of maintenance is only performed when there are chances of failure occurrence. It relies on condition-monitoring equipment to check condition of equipment in real-time.
-
Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) : Tdm is a maintenance strategy that aims at keeping assets up and running without any interruption as well as improving condition of assets also. It simply focuses on achieving perfect production and increasing equipment effectiveness. Other ways to reduce EM workload :
- One should choose proper trained technicians and experts to perform production work.
- One should use tools and resources that are most appropriate and needed.
- Providing full information to employees regarding working of equipment.
- Adopting a proactive maintenance strategy: This includes regular testing, monitoring, and updating of the system to prevent problems from occurring, which can help to reduce the number of emergency maintenance incidents.
- Implementing automation: Automating repetitive and routine tasks can help to reduce the load on maintenance teams and reduce the number of emergency maintenance incidents.
- Using tools and technologies that can help to improve the efficiency of maintenance tasks: This includes automated testing tools, monitoring tools, and configuration management tools that can help to identify and resolve problems more quickly.
- Having a well-defined maintenance plan: This includes regular maintenance activities, such as testing, backup, and bug fixing, which can help to reduce the number of emergency maintenance incidents.
- Documenting the system: This includes creating detailed documentation that describes the system’s architecture, design, and functionality, which can help to make maintenance more efficient and reduce the number of emergency maintenance incidents.
- Properly testing the system: This includes running comprehensive tests to ensure that the system is working correctly and that it does not cause any new problems, which can help to reduce the number of emergency maintenance incidents.
- Training personnel: Training personnel to perform maintenance tasks can help to reduce the load on maintenance teams and reduce the number of emergency maintenance incidents.
- Using open-source software: Open-source software tends to have a larger community of developers and contributors, which can help to reduce the number of emergency maintenance incidents.