Activities of Plant Maintenance Activity

The plant maintenance activity comprises of the following three main activities:

• Installation, Erection & Commissioning of equipment or machinery.
• Prevention of the failures of the equipment.
• Restoring the condition of the equipment in case of failure.

The above technical activities also involved some analytical & managerial aspects such like planning, analysing the failures, scheduling the preventive maintenance and spare parts management.

Actually every machine is carefully inspected or tested on one hand by the seller before this is sold and on the other hand by the purchaser before it is put into use. Though the user operates the machine as per the specifications & directions by the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), even in the idealistic conditions also, there is no 100% guarantee that the machine shall never fail. No machine is immune to failures. And more over as the machine is put in use; the wear & tear develops on running. These worn-out parts might lead to machine failure or breakdown and thence to stoppage or shut down for repair or replacement of parts. At certain times, this might prove very expensive or crucial if not acted in time. The role of plant engineering & management has to inevitably enter at this moment to restore the condition or to control the machine from further deterioration or failure. As a fact, the PEM enters the picture much before the failure takes place, i.e. to prevent the failure to make sense to the proverb "Prevention is better than cure".

Strictly speaking, the function of Maintenance or PEM begins much before to the activity of preventive maintenance activity. The activity begins with the erection & installation of machinery is also taken care by the PEM. In few of industries the unloading of machinery while they are procured, is detached from stores or purchase management and is assigned to the PEM owing to the cause that the maintenance personnel are well versed with the knowledge of machine care & method of unloading, etc. In specific case of sophisticated machinery this becomes the ultimate necessity.