This website uses cookies primarily for visitor analytics. Certain pages will ask you to fill in contact details to receive additional information. On these pages you have the option of having the site log your details for future visits. Indicating you want the site to remember your details will place a cookie on your device. To view our full cookie policy, please click here. You can also view it at any time by going to our Contact Us page.

Close

Which maintenance strategy is leading the way?

22 June 2023

Christian Nomine looks at the different maintenance strategies that are employed for food and beverage processors.

The success of many food and beverage companies can be directly attributed to the types of maintenance strategies they implement. Choosing the best strategy can lead to more reliable production processes with minimised downtime, reduced operational costs, and increased productivity. Highly tuned production processes are vital today to ensure product continuity and quality and to stay ahead of the competition. Common maintenance strategies employed across the food and beverage industry include reactive, preventive, condition-based, reliability-centered, and predictive maintenance. 

Reactive maintenance: Also called ‘run-to-failure’ or ‘breakdown’ maintenance, reactive maintenance is performed when assets/equipment malfunction or fail. Although this type of maintenance has its time and place – such as for non-critical equipment where downtime has minimal impact on production, it is the most inefficient and costliest strategy due to unexpected downtime and repairs. This type of maintenance can also result in damaged equipment and lost production. Since quality control and traceability are crucial and often depend on continuous production, reactive maintenance is not a viable choice for the food and beverage industry. 

Preventive maintenance: Involving scheduled maintenance that is performed on a regular calendared basis, preventive maintenance focuses on keeping assets/equipment in good working health and thereby preventing unexpected downtime and costly repairs. The work that usually falls into this category includes inspection, cleaning, greasing, and replacement of worn components. The food and beverage industry can use preventive maintenance to effectively ensure improved equipment health and longevity, reduced operational costs, increased safety, and most importantly increased product quality.

Condition-based maintenance: By analysing real-time data to verify asset/equipment condition, a condition-based maintenance strategy can determine whether work is called for, rather than always performing it at scheduled intervals according to a preventive maintenance schedule. This maintenance requires continuous equipment monitoring and the capture and analysis of this data to gauge the ideal time for maintenance. Condition-based maintenance suits the food and beverage industry as it can be used to improve equipment health and life, reduce downtime, and improve production safety and product quality.

Reliability-centered maintenance: Reliability-centered maintenance aims to optimise performance by determining the most effective maintenance needed for critical assets/equipment. To do this, data on equipment performance is analysed to determine failure probability and its related consequences and to therefore choose the most appropriate maintenance work to prevent or alleviate such failure. This type of maintenance strategy is also effective for the food and beverage industry. 

Predictive maintenance: Predictive maintenance uses data analysis and machine learning algorithms to predict equipment malfunction or failure before it occurs. Using sensors, software, and other tools, this type of maintenance involves continuous monitoring of asset/equipment performance. Maintenance teams can then identify patterns and trends that indicate a potential failure and act before something goes awry. The teams can then perform the necessary work before a failure causes costly downtime. The food and beverage industry can most certainly benefit from such a strategy.

Clearly, it would be best to catch a potential problem before it happens, so predictive maintenance is a key to running factories at maximum efficiency and productivity. 

Christian Nomine is Strategic Product Manager Visualization & Analytics, Factory Automation EMEA, Strategic Product Marketing, Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V., German Branch.


Contact Details and Archive...

Print this page | E-mail this page