Chapter 4: Preventive Maintenance

4.1 Preventive Maintenance Elements, Plant Characteristics in Need

of a PM Program, and a Principle for Selecting Items for PM
Important Steps for Establishing a PM Program
 PM Measures
 Mean Preventive Maintenance Time (MPMT)
4.2 Median Preventive Maintenance Time (MDPMT)
 Maximum Preventive Maintenance Time (MXPMT)
 PM Models
 Inspection Optimization Model I
 Reliability and Mean Time to Failure Determination Model
 INTRODUCTION
• Preventive maintenance (PM) is an important
component of a maintenance activity. Within a
maintenance organization it usually accounts for a major
proportion of the total maintenance effort.
• PM may be described as the care and servicing by
individuals involved with maintenance to keep
equipment/facilities in satisfactory operational state by
providing for systematic inspection, detection, and
correction of incipient failures either prior to their
occurrence or prior to their development into major
failure.
• Some of the main objectives of PM are to: enhance capital
equipment productive life, reduce critical equipment
breakdowns, allow better planning and scheduling of needed
maintenance work, minimize production losses due to
equipment failures, and promote health and safety of
maintenance personnel.
• From time to time PM programs in maintenance
organizations end up in failure (i.e., they lose upper
management support) because their cost is either
unjustifiable or they take a significant time to show results.
It is emphasized that all PM must be cost effective.
• The most important principle to keep continuous
management support is: “If it is not going to save money,
then don’t do it!”
 PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE ELEMENTS, PLANT CHARACTERISTICS IN NEED OF
A PM PROGRAM, AND A PRINCIPLE FOR SELECTING ITEMS FOR PM

There are seven elements of PM as shown in Fig. 4.1. 1 Each element

is discussed below.
1. Inspection: Periodically inspecting materials/items to determine
their serviceability by comparing their physical, electrical,
mechanical, etc., characteristics (as applicable) to expected standards
2. Servicing: Cleaning, lubricating, charging, preservation, etc., of
items/ materials periodically to prevent the occurrence of incipient
failures
3. Calibration: Periodically determining the value of characteristics
of an item by comparison to a standard; it consists of the comparison
of two instruments, one of which is certified standard with known
accuracy, to detect and adjust any discrepancy in the accuracy of the
material/parameter being compared to the established standard value
4. Testing: Periodically testing or checking out to
determine serviceability and detect
electrical/mechanical-related degradation
5. Alignment: Making changes to an item’s specified
variable elements for the purpose of achieving optimum
performance
6. Adjustment: Periodically adjusting specified
variable elements of material for the purpose of
achieving the optimum system performance
7. Installation: Periodic replacement of limited-life
items or the items experiencing time cycle or wear
degradation, to maintain the specified system tolerance
Some characteristics of a plant in need of a good
preventive maintenance program are as follows:
• Low equipment use due to failures.
• Large volume of scrap and rejects due to
unreliable equipment.
• Rise in equipment repair costs due to negligence
in areas such as regular lubrication, inspection,
and replacement of worn items/components.
• High idle operator times due to equipment
failures.
• Reduction in capital equipment expected
productive life due to unsatisfactory maintenance.
• Table presents 17 questions for determining
the adequacy of a preventive maintenance
program within an organization.
• The answer “yes” or “no” to each question is
given 5 or 0 points, respectively.
• A “maybe” answer is assigned a score from 1
to 4.
• A total score of less than 55 points indicates
that the preventive maintenance program
requires further improvements.
• Proposed the following principle or formula to be
used when deciding to go ahead with a PM
program:

where CPMS = total cost of preventive maintenance

system,
α = a factor whose value is proposed to be taken as
70%; more specifically, 70% of the total cost of
breakdowns,
NB = number of breakdowns,
ACPBD = average cost per breakdown.
 IMPORTANT STEPS FOR
ESTABLISHING A PM PROGRAM
• To develop an effective PM program, the availability of a number of
items is necessary.
• Some of those items include accurate historical records of
equipment, manufacturer’s recommendations, skilled personnel, past
data from similar equipment, service manuals, unique identification
of all equipment, appropriate test instruments and tools, management
support and user cooperation, failure information by problem/cause/
action, consumables and replaceable components/parts, and clearly
written instructions with a checklist to be signed off.
• There are a number of steps involved in developing a PM program.
Figure presents six steps for establishing a highly effective PM
program in a short period.
Each step is discussed below.
1. Identify and choose the areas. Identify and selection of one or
two important areas to concentrate the initial PM effort. These
areas should be crucial to the success of overall plant operations
and may be experiencing a high degree of maintenance actions.
The main objective of this step is to obtain immediate results in
highly visible areas, as well as to win concerned management
support.
2. Identify the PM needs. Define the PM requirements. Then,
establish a schedule of two types of tasks: daily PM inspections
and periodic PM assignments. The daily PM inspections could be
conducted by either maintenance or production personnel. An
example of a daily PM inspection is to check the waste water
settleable solids concentration. Periodic PM assignments usually
are performed by the maintenance workers. Examples of such
assignments are replacing throwaway filters, replacing drive belts,
and cleaning steam traps and permanent filters.
3. Establish assignment frequency. Establish the frequency of the
assignments. This involves reviewing the equipment condition and
records. Normally, the basis for establishing the frequency is the
experience of those familiar with the equipment and the
recommendations of vendors and engineering. It must be
remembered that vendor recommendations are generally based on
the typical usage of items under consideration.
4. Prepare the PM assignments. Daily and periodic assignments
are identified and described in detail, then submitted for approval.
5. Schedule the PM assignments on annual basis. The defined
PM assignments are scheduled on the basis of a twelve-month
period.
6. Expand the PM program as necessary. After the implementation
of all PM daily inspections and periodic assignments in the initially
selected areas, the PM can be expanded to other areas. Experience
gained from the pilot PM projects is instrumental to expanding the
program.
 PM MEASURES
Three important measures of PM are:
• Mean preventive maintenance time (MPMT),
• Median preventive maintenance time (MDPMT), and
• Maximum preventive maintenance time (MXPMT).
Each measure is described below.
MEAN PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE TIME (MPMT)
• MPMT is the average item/equipment downtime needed
to conduct scheduled PM. This time does not include PM
time expended on the equipment/item during operation or
administrative and logistic downtime. Mean time for PM
is defined by
where
m = total number of data points,
MPMT i= mean or average time needed to perform
i th preventive maintenance action,
for i= 1, 2, 3,…, m,
fi= frequency of i th preventive maintenance action in
actions per operating hour after adjustment for
equipment duty cycle.
 MEDIAN PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE TIME
(MDPMT)
• This is the item/equipment downtime needed to carry out 50% of all scheduled
preventive maintenance actions on the item/equipment under the conditions
outlined for MDPMT. For lognormal distributed PM times, the MDPMT is
given by

• where λi = constant failure rate of element i of the item/equipment for which

maintainability is to be evaluated, adjusted for factors such as duty cycle,
tolerance and interaction failures, and catastrophic failures that will lead to
deterioration of item/equipment performance to the degree that a maintenance
action will be started, for
• i = 1, 2, 3,…,m.
 MAXIMUM PREVENTIVE
MAINTENANCE TIME (MXPMT)
• This is the maximum item/equipment downtime required to accomplish a
given percentage of all scheduled preventive maintenance actions on the
item/equipment under consideration. For lognormal distributed PM times,
the MXPMT is given by

• where y = value from table of normal distribution corresponding to the

given percentage value at which MXPMT is defined (e.g., y = 1.283 for
the 90th percentile and y = 1.645 for the 95th percentile). log MPMTm is
the mean of logarithms of MPMTi and is expressed by
 PM MODELS
Over the years many PM-related useful
mathematical models have been developed.
INSPECTION OPTIMIZATION MODEL I
• Inspections are often disruptive, but they usually
reduce downtime because of lesser number of
failures.
• This model can be used to obtain the optimum
number of inspections per facility per unit of time.
Total facility downtime is defined by
where
TDT = total downtime per unit of time for a facility,
C = a constant associated with a particular facility,
Tb = facility downtime per breakdown or failure,
Ti = facility downtime per inspection,
Y = number of inspections per facility per unit of time.
By differentiating Eq. (4.7) with respect to y , we get
 RELIABILITY AND MEAN TIME TO FAILURE DETERMINATION
MODEL OF A SYSTEM WITH PERIODIC MAINTENANCE

• This mathematical model can be used to calculate the reliability

and mean time to failure of a system subject to periodic
maintenance. The model is subject to the following assumptions:
• A failed part is replaced with a new and statistically identical
one.
• Periodic maintenance is performed on the system after every y
hours, starting at time zero.
For periodic maintenance, the time interval of y hours is written as
 INSPECTION OPTIMIZATION MODEL
II
• This is similar to Inspection Frequency Model I.
It can be used to determine optimum inspection
frequency in order to minimize the per-unit-of-
time equipment/facility downtime. In this model
facility/equipment (per-unit time) total
downtime is the function of inspection
frequency. Mathematically, it is defined as
follows
The value of n will be optimum when the left and right sides of Eq.
are equal.
At this point the equipment/facility total downtime will be minimal .
 PM ADVANTAGES

The performance of PM has many advantages

including:
• Increase in equipment availability,
• Performed as convenient,
• Balanced workload,
• Reduction in overtime,
• Increase in production revenue,
• Consistency in quality,
• Reduction in need for standby equipment,
• Stimulation in pre-action instead of reaction,
• Reduction in parts inventory,
• Improved safety,
• Standardized procedures,
• Times, and costs,
• Scheduled resources on hand,
• Useful in promoting benefit/cost optimization.
 Some disadvantages of PM are:
• Exposing equipment to possible damage,
• Using a greater number of parts,
• Increases in initial costs,
• Failures in new parts/components, and
• Demands more frequent access to equipment/item.