Machine malfunctioning and downtime in the manufacturing domain reduce overall productivity and drastically increase the cost of maintenance. Over the years, manufacturers have adopted  preventive and corrective maintenance strategies to keep their machines running and operational for longer durations. A recent study reveals that aging equipment is viewed as a major challenge to improving maintenance by 67% of the manufacturing facilities. The answer to this problem lies in improving preventive and corrective maintenance strategies through digitization.

Used by over 88% of manufacturing companies, preventive maintenance has been effective at preventing equipment breakdown through regular checks and scheduled inspections. This isn’t to say corrective maintenance doesn’t have its place.  Corrective maintenance is essential as equipment failures will occur even with the best preventive maintenance measures.

How is Preventive Maintenance different from corrective maintenance?

It is fairly simple. The corrective procedure is performed only when an equipment failure or problem is reported, while the preventive procedure follows a scheduled maintenance program, to try to prevent failures before they happen regardless of machine condition.      

How does a Front Line Worker platform help in improving both preventive and corrective maintenance operations in the Manufacturing sector? We'll explore this question in depth below.

How Front Line Worker Platforms Improve Preventive Maintenance?

By empowering the front line maintenance worker with digital technologies, a Front Line or Connected Worker Platform can improve preventive maintenance (PM) in multiple ways, such as:

1. Capture and analyse high-quality data from real-time PM workflows using photographic and video evidence, which depicts the correct procedures and pinpoints problems, if any.
2. Improve visibility into front line maintenance work by generating automatic job completion reports and enable instant communication among maintenance personnel using chat integrations.
3. Provide remote assistance from technical experts using Augmented Reality (AR)  so that technicians can correct machine problems detected during PM and reduce problem resolution time.
4. Provide self-assist tools and online training resources to help front line operators  perform any assigned task accurately no matter their experience level.

Machine failures will still occur even in the best of manufacturing facilities. Let's see how a Front Line Worker platform helps in improving corrective maintenance.

How Front Line Worker Platforms Improve Corrective Maintenance

Manufacturing companies can save anywhere from 12% and 18% of their maintenance costs by using preventive maintenance over corrective maintenance (CM).  Optimized and efficient PM can thus indirectly improve CM, as machines are less likely to break down during production.How a Connected Worker Platform directly improves corrective maintenance operations:

1. Enhances job completion with the aid of digital workflows and visual work instructions to standardize the completion steps. This repository of digital information can be used later by new maintenance workers, who can also perform corrective maintenance when required with increased efficiency.
2. Reduces machine downtime by providing an instant and immediate connection to remote experts using AR-enabled technology. By providing a real-time view of front line operations, remote assistance tools can be used to rectify major machine-related problems instantly and at lower cost.
3. Provide 24/7 access to self-assist tools and resources that can assist CM technicians to gain more technical knowledge and perform their job more efficiently.

Conclusion

An optimized preventive and corrective maintenance strategy is essential for any manufacturing company interested in improving production-related efficiency and costs.

Since its inception, Atheer has been at the forefront of empowering manufacturing workers with its Connected Worker platform using AR technologies with easy low code/no code implementation. Their front line worker platform is device agnostic so your front line teams can use the devices they naturally use in the flow of work (Laptops, phones, tablets and Smart Glasses). Our self assist training provides workers with contextually rich instructions to speed training and rapidly upskill experienced employees to help you meet the skills gap.

Atheer's digital workflows standardize tasks so they are done right every time and it's easy to discover process deviations before they cascade into system failures. Atheer is wired for continuous improvement, giving management a never before seen visibility into operations with every action time stamped and job completion proven through photographic or video evidence.  It's intent is to optimize OEE through elevated machine monitoring and service tasks.

The Atheer platform has helped manufacturers overcome multiple pain points in the area of preventive and corrective maintenance operations to dramatically reduce costs and increase efficiency.