Predictive Maintenance vs Reactive Maintenance

  • admin
  • January 20, 2022
  • 5 minutes reading

Poor maintenance techniques can have a huge impact on your business. Aside from experiencing unexpected downtime wherein equipment fail to work at a critical time, the cost of this downtime can also be a huge blow to your company. It is difficult to determine the frequency in which equipment need to be taken offline for maintenance. Also, there is the issue of the financial loss associated with productivity being put on hold.

Companies have been struggling in balancing traditional maintenance techniques like reactive and preventive maintenance. However, thanks to recent technology, predictive maintenance is now being employed by businesses to ensure that their operations will run smoothly. But what is the difference between reactive and predictive maintenance?

Reactive Maintenance

Reactive maintenance takes place after a problem has occurred. It is a very hands-off approach which keeps routine maintenance costs low. Although this means less cost to the business initially, since there is minimal maintenance done, the benefits only last until it breaks down.
The cost of running reactive maintenance tends to be more expensive as opposed to the asset’s production value when it is run to failure. Not only that, but when more parts start to break down, the cost of repair goes up.

Although this technique does have its benefits, companies often fall victim to focusing their repairs on malfunctioning parts rather than the whole. Not only is this a waste of time and assets, but it can also cause a significant loss to the business. Each hour a machine is offline is a waste of time and money as productivity is stifled. This can be a problem especially when maintenance and repairs take a long time to get done.

Predictive Maintenance

Predictive maintenance makes use of technology that connects your equipment to diagnostic tool for real-time monitoring. An example of a Predictive Maintenance tool is SCAN2i, which monitors your audio-visual assets they are being used. Using Artificial Intelligence that analyzes the data gathered in real-time, the company will be able to detect equipment failure before you even notice them and it can also determine the best time for you to replace your equipment based on their usage patterns.

Instead of running an asset to the point of failure like in reactive maintenance, predictive maintenance assists businesses in optimizing their solutions in handling their equipment. For example, this diagnostic tool can predict the best time to conduct maintenance to prevent problems from arising in the long run.

Although setting up this infrastructure means investing a high amount, since it involves the use of sensors, setting up data management, and other assets, it is cheaper in the long run. Through accurate predictions based on real-time data, companies will be able to limit downtime hours and costs by running maintenance on their machines and equipment at the right time.

Importance of Predictive Maintenance

The main goal of this maintenance strategy is to provide a solution to both preventive and reactive maintenance without the need of pushing an asset to its limits or having to replace a still fully functioning part.

Through predictive maintenance, companies will be able to minimize the need for planned as well as unplanned maintenance, further damage to assets, expensive maintenance costs, as well as prolonged downtime.

With the aid of advanced technology, the predictive maintenance program runs several processes such as monitoring of the asset while analyzing the data gathered in real-time. This enables the end-user to keep track of the machines’ health and to predict the ideal time to conduct maintenance even before an issue arises.

Through this technology, the maintenance team will be in a better position to deploy their team to address any potential problem they detected so they can fix it before it worsens. This helps them become more efficient in their work in ensuring that all assets in the company are working smoothly.

Using predictive maintenance in the right way offers several benefits to the business such as correct use of manpower and reduction of work disruption. This leads to less financial loss since maintenance is scheduled at the right time and downtime will not take long compared to preventive or reactive maintenance.

Making your business more efficient and productive relies on utilizing the right maintenance tools. What better way to achieve this than incorporating predictive maintenance tools like SCAN2i in your business? If you want to find out more or are interested in partnering with our team, you can reach us at sales@aitssg.com. We are ready to give you the best solutions that are fully customized to your business and your needs.

BMS, Smart Building Solutions