What Is Precision Maintenance? Everything to Know

Precision maintenance work
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When critical equipment breaks, facility operations come to an abrupt halt — costing time, money and potential damage to your business’ reputation. Imagine a power plant turbine suddenly failing due to improper alignment, resulting in weeks of downtime and thousands of dollars in lost revenue and maintenance costs. 

The reality is that many businesses focus on this reactive maintenance strategy rather than being proactive with precision maintenance. The consequences? Shorter equipment lifespans, surprise failures and expensive repairs. 

Precision maintenance, however, addresses the root causes of failures long before they happen. Through highly detailed procedures, effective technician training and the right tools, you can get equipment to last longer and prevent costly breakdowns. Follow along for tips on how you can implement precision maintenance at your organization to ensure continuity and mitigate the risk of failures. 

What Is Precision Maintenance?

Precision maintenance is a strategy that highlights the overall, precise maintenance culture of a company down to its specific processes across all equipment and parts. The objective of this meticulous approach is to minimize equipment failures and downtime, extend equipment lifespans and optimize organization-wide performance. 

A precision maintenance plan involves a consistent, well-documented standard operating procedure (SOP) that consistently reaches the same results every time, no matter who is involved in the work. To make this challenging but effective approach to maintenance work, organization leadership needs to prioritize:

  • Strict expectations of maintenance technicians to follow the exact plan 
  • Maintenance data collection and analytics for informed decision-making
  • Accurate and exact measurement of all equipment 

Key Requirements for Precision Maintenance

This detail-oriented approach to maintenance works well for maintenance teams as long as all of these precise standards are met: 

Experienced Employees

Maintenance technicians with years of experience are the only ones that can adhere to the strict processes and industry standards required for effective precision maintenance. This approach requires technical expertise, attention-to-detail and a strong understanding of the equipment’s functionality. 

High-Quality Tools & Parts

Accuracy and durability of tools and parts is a must-have for reducing equipment breakdowns and ensuring the consistent smooth operations that precision maintenance provides. Low-quality spare parts and tools can break more easily and result in costly downtimes. 

Proactive Maintenance Approach

Failing to continuously inspect and maintain key equipment and parts can result in the unexpected downtimes you’re trying to avoid by building a precision maintenance plan. Schedule technicians to perform preventative maintenance tasks proactively to enhance asset performance and increase uptime.

Easy-to-Follow Workflow

Even with experienced technicians, your goal should be to make your maintenance procedures as detailed and simple to understand as possible. By writing specific, step-by-step instructions for all maintenance tasks, it will be impossible for maintenance workers to misinterpret your SOPs. 

Detailed Documentation of Asset Maintenance History & Other Asset Information

Whenever a technician performs maintenance, all relevant data needs to be collected to provide a detailed record of equipment performance that can be used for making data-informed decisions, ensuring consistent adherence to protocols and predicting future issues that may arise. A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) like Coast makes it easy to create an asset management system and centralize maintenance data in a simplified digital platform that’s automatically stored in the cloud and can be used to produce relevant maintenance reports. 

Continuous Improvement to the Process

Your maintenance systems need to adapt as technology advances, equipment wears down and insights collected from data help you to refine and improve upon your existing processes. A precision maintenance approach is a constantly evolving process for effectively managing operation-wide procedures. 

Examples of Precision Maintenance

A precision maintenance process can be applied across various industries and equipment types. Here are real-life examples of this type of maintenance in action:

  • Fine tuning machine vibration levels: Addressing excessive vibration can reduce wear and tear to mitigate the risk of failure, extend equipment’s lifespan and ensure continued smooth operations. 
  • Precise alignment of rotating parts: Your equipment needs precise alignment to mitigate friction, optimize performance and improve overall operational efficiency.
  • Lubricant materials: Regularly lubricating your equipment can extend its lifespan and prevent breakdowns by reducing wear and heat.
  • Cleaning an operating environment to be 100 percent contamination-free: Prevent damage to your equipment and keep employees safe by keeping toxic contaminants out of the workplace. 

Steps to Implement a Precision Maintenance Program

Precision maintenance implementationYou need an ironclad, well-detailed precision maintenance plan to make this nuanced approach to equipment management work. Here are the step-by-step processes for implementing this program at your workplace:

1. Assess Your Team’s Skills

Technicians need a deep understanding of the equipment at hand to effectively maintain it with the amount of detail a precision maintenance approach requires. If you have inexperienced people working on your machinery, you need to instead hire people with proven expertise to make this type of program work. 

2. Train Your Maintenance Personnel 

Even with highly technical individuals, given how detail-oriented a precision maintenance plan is, you will still need to train even the most experienced maintenance workers to effectively follow the step-by-step procedures outlined in your plan. 

3. Identify Crucial Assets 

When building out your precision maintenance strategy, start with your most crucial pieces of equipment — the ones that have a direct impact on your operations and your business’ bottom light. Once you start to see the benefits of precision maintenance, you can grow your strategy to include all aspects of your maintenance approach.

4. Create Detailed Maintenance Procedures for Crucial Assets 

Starting with your most crucial assets, create detailed maintenance procedures that you can store within a given work order using a CMMS. Having consistency throughout your preventive maintenance work minimizes the risk of human error, extends the lifecycle of core assets and ensures continuously efficient operations.

5. Implement a CMMS to Organize Maintenance Needs

You need an organized approach to scheduling inspections and maintenance tasks, recording maintenance data and prioritizing effective inventory management for having the necessary parts and tools. As we’ve mentioned before, a CMMS software will centralize all of these processes within one digital platform. 

6. Continually Review Your Precision Maintenance Approach

It’s important to identify key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine the goals for your precision maintenance approach. Then, as you collect tangible data, you can see if you’re meeting those goals to make more informed decisions about how to improve your strategy and integrate new technologies into your operational procedures. Be prepared to frequently adjust your precision maintenance plan to ensure that you’re constantly maximizing operational efficiency.  

  • Harrison Kelly

    Harrison Kelly is a B2B SaaS content writer and SEO consultant with published content for notable brands including GovPilot, Belong Home and Zen Business. In addition to writing, Harrison has a passion for riding (and working on) bicycles, hiking and road tripping around the United States.

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