Friday, September 23, 2011

ERP Functions - Maintenance 3

Last week we studied in detail about three types of maintenance activities. This week we shall see other functions related to maintenance department.

Critical Spares
Warranty, Free Service

We have seen in the last blog that all the types of maintenance activities gets involved with replacement of spares. Some of the times maintenance activity will finish without spares replacement, but in some cases replacement will be necessary. In a industry there will be different kinds of machines, therefore the parts in them will also might not be same. However some spares may also be common across many machines.  Common spares can be purchased and kept in stores as it will be useful for one or other machines. But some of spares will be very much expensive or may also bulk in size, in that case purchasing and storing them will cost more to the company. Some of spares parts will be such that they are not readily available and also if it is not replaced the machine may not run and the machine will be the major machine of production. Such spare parts are categorized as Critical Spares.

Therefore it is necessary to have proper defined spare parts SCM (Supply Chain Management).  Along with that proper stock management of the spares is also required. Especially for critical spares, Min Level, Reorder Level etc are to be defined properly in order to have very less breakdown time of the production. However excessive inventory of expensive item will add to dead money and increases inventory management cost. Therefore maintenance department has to define spares and categorize them also have to define the stock level.

Apart from spare parts management maintenance department also have to maintain the warranty, free service details of machines. This will save the huge amount of expenses to the company.

This completes the functions of Maintenance department. From next week onwards we shall see the Non- Technical functions of Industry. Starting from Human Resource Management.

Keep watching the space.



Friday, September 16, 2011

ERP Functions - Maintenance 2

Last week we have briefly seen about the Plant Maintenance. This week we shall elaborate on each of them and the data collected.

Preventive Maintenance:  It is obvious that, we should do certain tasks and inspection in order to prevent machines from failure. These tasks are to be carried in regular intervals of time, like monthly, weekly, fortnightly etc. The set of tasks or inspection activities are called as check list. the intervals are called as frequency. So preventive maintenance of a machine will have Check List and Frequency defined. Along with that certain spares parts may have to be replaced. Some industries also define the number of man power required and the time required for the completion of activities. With all these the preventive maintenance is carried out and records of carried out preventive maintenance with observation will also be maintained.

Break Down Maintenance: Machines are prone to get failed to perform the desired activity due to various reasons. So when the machine fails or its break down happens the maintenance activities done are called as break down maintenance. Usually the machine operating department will inform to maintenance department about the break down of the machine. Maintenance department will first analysis on immediate cause of nature of breakdown and starts the activities to make the machine running normally. The activities involved will be noted down also any spare part replacements. Once the machine starts running the machine is handed over to the operator. All the timings are noted i.e. Reporting Time, Break Down Activity Time, Handing Over time. If the similar nature of breakdown is repeating then maintenance department will do the root cause analysis. From the root cause analysis certain preventive maintenance activities may be added to prevent the breakdown. 

Predictive Maintenance: This type of maintenance activities are generally carried out in a well established industry with experienced maintenance department staffs. Experienced maintenance engineers can sense the upcoming trouble to the machine by the current performance or noises, vibration etc. Based on these observation they will plan certain maintenance activities to be carried out after certain time or immediately. This is almost similar to preventive maintenance with the difference that it is carried only once and only when sensed. 

Apart from these planned to activities there are many activities which maintenance department will do in their day to day activities. All these are also recorded.

This about the activities of maintenance department. Further we shall see the material procurement for maintenance and types of cost involved with maintenance.

Keep watching

Sunday, September 4, 2011

ERP Functions - Maintenance 1

After long break of one month I am back now to continue our journey on ERP. So far we have gone through Sales, Planning, Supply Chain Management, Production, Quality. Now in this blog we shall move to one more supporting department Maintenance Department.

As the name tells us, Maintenance Department is to maintain the equipment of the factory in running conditions with longer durability period. The proper maintenance of equipments will ensure on time production and on time delivery there by increasing company's business.

There are basically three types of maintenance operations.

1. Preventive Maintenance: Performing activities based on predefined check lists on the equipment. The activities are performed on periodic intervals in order to ensure proper running conditions of the machine.

2. Breakdown Maintenance: This maintenance activity is performed when an equipment has stopped from performing. This is done on need basis.

3. Predictive Maintenance: These activities are done based on pre-assumptions. Usually experts of the equipments will able to grasp the problems that may arrive in future for the machine based on machine behaviors. Then in order to prevent the breakdown because of the problem maintenance activities are done.

These are major types of maintenance. In coming blogs we shall look into each type of maintenance in detail.

Keep watching space