If you're the kind of person that is not constantly fixing up your car or your home heating system, chances are that you probably have some sort of schedule you keep to make sure that these pieces of equipment are kept running in tip-top shape. Things like regularly checking and changing your car's fluids, rotating the tires, even replacing your wiper blades is a common courtesy we do for our vehicles.
With this being said, why is it that we can never find the time to perform some of the more basic maintenance tasks on the machinery that we use to make us money every day? The answer is most of the time it is that the machine needs to be producing, and we run it until it will not run anymore. We often set aside more time for repairing our machinery than we do for maintaining the equipment in order to minimize the intensity of the or even the need for downtime due to repair.
Having a preventive maintenance program in all of your facilities is a great way to not only prevent unforeseen machine failure but give you the ability to catch any possible failures before they happen as well. Of all of the maintenance tasks that need to be done, most do not require your maintenance team to conduct every time. The daily, weekly, and even most monthly checks can be performed by your operators.
Your machine operators are your number one resource when it comes to the line of defense against machine failure, as they are the ones that should be most intimate with the piece of equipment they run every day. However, your maintenance department should still be performing the 3 month, 6 month, or yearly maintenance tasks as they require different skill sets. Having a well scheduled, well designed preventive maintenance program should keep your equipment running at peak performance and should positively impact your production in the long run.