In the face of regular machine breakdowns costing manufacturing companies nearly a trillion dollars every year, the manufacturing sector can no longer rely on reactive maintenance. An effective preventive maintenance plan is a must if manufacturers  want to extend the life of their machinery and reduce their operational costs.

Apart from increasing the asset life, an optimized preventive maintenance (PM) plan can provide additional benefits such as reducing machine downtime, improving worker safety, and raising production capacity. The question is can digital tools and technologies empower front line workers to upgrade their preventive maintenance plan to the next level? You’re darn right they can.

Let’s discuss how Connected Worker Platforms can your company’s PM plan to the next level!

How Connected Worker Platforms Elevate Your Preventive Maintenance Plan

A Front Line Worker Platform enables connected workers by offering them end-to-end support. A connected worker in any manufacturing business is a front line worker fully integrated into their environment using digital tools and technologies. They are connected through the devices they naturally use in the flow of work(mobile, laptop, smart glasses and tablets.) This allows them to be connected to visual instructions, digital workflows and remote assistance to make sure they do their best work every time.

Let’s look at three ways in which this digital platform can help front line operators with their Preventive Maintenance plan:

1. For regular scheduling and completion of maintenance jobs

Front Line Worker platforms can simplify preventive maintenance work and automate it according to a predetermined schedule. The majority of maintenance operations are conducted according to a fixed and predetermined schedule, which could be monthly, weekly, or even daily depending on the task and the needs of the critical assets you are servicing for effective preventive maintenance.

Scheduled or recurring jobs can be automatically assigned to the right technician at the right time with the correct instructions, thus putting your PM planning on “auto-pilot”.

Automatic job scheduling removes the hassle of manual job creation and assigning, which is just one of the problems associated with paper-based processes for preventive maintenance scheduling.

2. For proactively implementing Preventive Maintenance plan

Front Line maintenance must be effective in the early detection and resolution of minor problems before they escalate into major challenges and hamper productivity.

Connected Worker platforms enable proactive preventive maintenance by arming the front line operators with photo-capturing and editing tools during scheduled jobs.

These advanced tools are useful in highlighting and escalating any service issues quickly to management so they can quickly allocate resources and decrease problem resolution time. Further, completed job reports are automatically generated when a job is completed and sent to the supervising managers, who can get immediate visibility on any front line issues as they arise and prevent unscheduled downtime. This is just one advantage of reaching Preventive Maintenance 4.0.

3. For urgent and immediate troubleshooting of critical problems.

Despite well optimized maintenance processes, critical machine problems calling for immediate action can come up at any time in the production facility. Using Front Line platforms, connected workers can now connect with remotely located experts who can assist them with timely instructions using the Augmented Reality (AR) technology.Using AR, remote experts get a real-time view of the critical problem, which helps them determine the correct course of action to be performed and can dramatically speed up problem resolution time.

Conclusion

For any manufacturing company, Front Line preventive maintenance technicians and engineers need a well-designed preventive maintenance program. Front Line Worker Platforms empower the connected worker with the digital tools they need to do their best work every time.Whether it's streamlining your preventive maintenance schedule or elevating maintenance tasks with improved training and digital workflows Connected Worker Platforms have you covered. But can you implement this digital transformation easily?The low code/no code Atheer Front Line Worker Platform is designed to meet the job requirements of Front Line workers and help them perform their work efficiently and improve productivity without added coding. It's easy to implement and seamlessly integrates with any ERP system. With the Atheer platform, connected workers can quickly acquire the right technical training to meet the Great Crew Challenge and improve your company's preventive maintenance program. Want to know how we can help your enterprise business?