Productive Maintenance

This aims the reduction of volume of maintenance work by better designs and better use of the materials. The equipment is so designed that the units or assemblies could be easily replaced as and when necessary before a breakdown occurs. Such replaceable items or units or sub-units are usually referred to as Least Replaceable Assemblies (LRA). The replaceability should be with the great ease so that the maintenance policy is to aim at the abolishing of repairs and is to upkeep by replacements or modifications. This can be achieved by a large number of standard types of machine tools or interchangeable units, e.g. the sub-units in metal cutting machines such as head stock, fraction mechanisms, gearbox, turret, spindle units, etc. Another fine example can be quoted here with computer systems. A computer system is composed of various alternatives of data storing/retrieving sub-systems like RAM, Internal HDD, External HDD, 3½" FDD, 5¼" FDD, CDROM, CDRW, CDRAM, USB Drive (Pen Drive), etc. which enables the replacement of these sub-systems in the event of their failures without affecting others working and overall performance.

Though the cost of spare parts increases here, the duration of repair time and loss of productive hours are reduced considerably and machine utilisation is increased. Also the production shop could work at full capacity and the quality of product is improved.