Preventive Maintenance in Industry 4.0

Preventive maintenance is the ability to carry out maintenance operations to prevent failures or breakdowns. This maintenance model makes it possible to identify potential failures of the assets, promoting early intervention to avoid stoppages in the productivity of the company.

Command-controlled appliances, intelligent cars and an infinite number of augmented reality devices are examples of this new digital reality that is already present in companies in several sectors. These new connectivity technologies used in industry 4.0 are applicable to the maintenance activities, more specifically to the preventive maintenance.

Maintenance management software (CMMS) assures the control of all maintenance operations and, in order to achieve the best possible performance, it is necessary to implement CMMS software that combines, in a balanced way, the two types of maintenance – corrective and preventive – articulating the various factors involved in this process: work orders, information on assets, costs, materials, consumption, organizational methodologies, among others.

Through the CMMS software functionalities, it is possible to control the entire industrial maintenance process, following the completed operations, the materials consumed, the services provided and their respective costs. All the information is registered in the system and integrates the history of each of the assets, allowing to know quickly its performance, the operation costs, the number of repairs and the costs involved, the lifetime and its contribution to the profitability of the company.

The CMMS solution enables data collection that runs automatically, for example through RFID and NFC sensors. In addition, forecasts can be made based on wear signals and aging conditions of the assets. All this is possible without the need for human resources dedicated to these operations.

Preventive maintenance practices significantly increase asset performance, the safety of technical equipment and the return on investment.

In the case of companies that already use intelligent performance monitoring systems via IoT, the CMMS software makes it possible to effectively leverage this investment by centralizing the control over operations of the entire industrial maintenance cycle.

Finally, we conclude that CMMS software is an important accelerator for the profitability of any company or organization.

Through the preventive maintenance operations registered in the CMMS software, it is possible to benefit from the following advantages:

• Reduced corrective maintenance operations;
• Reduced costs associated with asset repairs;
• Reduced production downtime due to failures or breakdowns;
• A higher level of asset availability;
• Improved productivity and productive capacity of the company