TABLE OF CONTENTS Once the preventive maintenance program is properly developed and implemented, and the tasks are properly executed, how does the program continue to maintain focus and deliver the desired results? It begins by reviewing the focus of a preventive maintenance program.
The first step is realizing what types of failures can and cannot be reduced or eliminated with a preventive maintenance program. The first two types of failures that an organization will try but fail to improve with their preventive maintenance program are listed in Figure 10-1. They are:
Infant mortality
Random failures
Infant mortality failure is a failure that occurs almost immediately after the equipment is started. Electronic failures is one of the primary examples. The first time a load is applied on a component, it fails. There is no preventive maintenance that can be performed to prevent this type of failure. There are mechanical examples of this type of failure also, for example, when a pump or motor is started for the first time and a bearing fails. This failure can be from a manufacturing defect in the bearing, damage to the bearing during a rebuild, or even damage to the bearing in transit.
Infant mortality failures need to be properly identified so that preventive maintenance resources are not expended trying to prevent this failure. Although root cause analysis can be performed and the real reason for failure identified and eliminated, this would be more the responsibility of the maintenance engineer...
