Several strategies or approaches are
available for improving the maintenance or breakdown performance of equipment. These are:
Table 3 (below) summarizes
these strategies.
The best strategy for a particular
machine or situation depends, partly, on the failure mode being experienced. For example, IRAN
is seldom effective for preventing early life failures. These rarely give warning and there is
no history to draw upon. Early life failures must be addressed in the original design and also
in the original manufacture and test of the equipment. Once in service, about all you can do is
wait until something breaks. This is why one of the "Pillars of TPM" is new equipment
management.
Table 2 (right) shows which strategies usually
apply to each failure mode.
Note that the redesign (design) strategy
applies to all failure modes. Throughout the equipment life, proper design and then redesign is the most critical element for ensuring equipment performance. Yet capital equipment
is often purchased using price as the primary decision factor.
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