With rising costs, volatile markets, unreliable supply lines, and a global impetus to become more sustainable, the pressure is on industry to make savings wherever possible. One way to address this challenge is to rethink your approach to maintenance.
Reactive, or corrective, maintenance means waiting until a piece of equipment breaks down or starts to underperform before performing a service. It’s the simplest approach to maintaining your electrical assets, but it’s by no means the most economical.
In fact, Deloitte research suggests that, on average, predictive maintenance can:
- Increase productivity by 25%
- Reduce breakdowns by 70%
- Lower maintenance costs by 25% (the frequency of maintenance intervals can be extended by 30% according to ABB practice).
But what is the difference between predictive and preventive maintenance? Although often placed in opposition to each other, predictive maintenance is actually part of the large preventive maintenance family along with time- and condition-based maintenance practices. Read on to find find out more.
What is preventive maintenance?
Preventive maintenance aims to stop mechanical failure before it happens. It reduces costs associated with unplanned outages by allowing you to control when and how downtime happens. It reduces the risk of malfunction by employing regular inspections and cleaning, as well as periodic testing.
ABB Electrification Service offers a preventive maintenance program for low- and medium-voltage equipment in all its forms, time-based, condition-based and predictive. It aims to anticipate the failures and reduce the deterioration of the equipment and risk of unexpected shutdown.
Time-based maintenance is built on a pre-set timetable. It uses a scheduled program of servicing to prevent equipment failure. Typically, it follows manufacturer guidance – just as you would take your car for regular services, regardless of the presence of specific faults, so too should you perform regular maintenance on your electrical infrastructure.
At ABB, we call this system SWAPS – See, Watch, Act, Perform, Secure.
Maintenance intervals are defined according to assessments of environmental and operational conditions, equipment age and the service record.
These maintenance programs can continue throughout the life of a piece of equipment, until it reaches the end of its operational life.
What is predictive maintenance?
While time-based maintenance is a strategy that allows companies to catch problems before they arise, it still has its limitations. Unexpected failures are still possible, and it’s possible that assets may receive more maintenance than is required to keep them functioning – both having impacts on the ROI of the maintenance program.
Condition-based maintenance, however, uses real-time data to understand the health of a given piece of electrical infrastructure, meaning that maintenance can be carried only when certain criteria are met. These criteria can be based on environmental factors – such as temperature – or measurements of the performance of the equipment itself, like trips, number of openings, etc.
Predictive maintenance takes things one step further. It takes the information gathered from condition-based maintenance and combines it with data on the age of the equipment, service history or past failures or repairs, and algorithmically calculates the optimum maintenance program.
ABB Ability™Asset Manager is an advanced cloud-based solution that allows real-time monitoring and optimization of your site equipment behavior using a simple, intuitive interface.
And because it’s cloud-based, you can understand the status of your electrical infrastructure anytime, anywhere, resulting in greater reliability and minimized unplanned maintenance.
The key benefits of preventive maintenance
Preventive maintenance creates value over the long-term by:
- Improving equipment efficiency
- Minimizing failures
- Reducing direct costs of maintenance
- Limiting plant shutdown
- Ensuring better efficiency and reliability of the plant
- Guaranteeing plant safety
- Extending product lifetime.
Maintenance programs also have long-term benefits when it comes to end-of-life services. By monitoring the status of electrical equipment, it is possible to more accurately predict when retrofits or upgrades will become necessary. This in turn extends the life of your assets even further, continuing to boost ROI.
Maintenance makes you more sustainable
ABB maintenance programs also help your business become more sustainable, thanks to the principles of circularity.
They allow you to move away from a “take-make-waste” mentality that relies on the extraction and disposal of finite materials.
Instead, a circular approach allows for the repair, replacement and upgrade of outdated or damaged parts, and the preservation of the wider system. It allows for the recirculation of resources and a reduced dependency of the materials we extract from the earth, reducing dependence on unreliable supply chains, and improving the planet’s prospects for regeneration.
Find out more about the ABB approach to circularity.
How a digital upgrade helped Swedish utility company Jämtkraft
Following a review of its low-voltage switchgear, Jämtkraft upgraded to ABB’s MNS Digital solution, extending the lifespan of the equipment and making predictive maintenance easier.
This retrofit project allows Jämtkraft to establish a program of predictive maintenance through real-time data collection and condition monitoring, allowing for better energy management and lifecycle optimization. It also supports preventive maintenance by providing detailed system data and analysis, which helps in avoiding unplanned outages and ensuring continuous operation.
