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electrical-engineering-portal.com
http://electrical-engineering-portal.com/maintenance-management-of-electrical-equipment-condition-monitoring-based-part-1
Ashok
Parikh
Maintenance Management Of Electrical Equipment (Condition
Monitoring Based) Part 1
Condition monitoring based maintenance management of electrical
equipment (on photo: Performing the manufacturers recommended
maintenance and testing of a circuit breaker will extend the
equipments useful life; photo credit: plantservices.com)
The cost of maintenance
In todays competitive market scenario, all types of industries
are under tremendous pressure to cut down their
maintenance costs, as they form a significant portion of the
operation costs. The industriesare forced to look for
different types of maintenance of the electrical equipment
rather than usual preventive maintenancebeing carried
out at a fixed interval of time.
Over the past twenty years or so, the concept of maintenance has
been assuming different dimensions and
changing a lot, perhaps more so than any other management
discipline. The changes are due to a huge increase
in the number and variety of plant equipment in the industries,
which must be properly maintained.
The electrical equipment with much more complex designs require
new maintenance techniquesand changinviewson maintenance
organization and responsibilities.
Maintenance activities are also responding to changing
expectations as follows:
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failures are quite serious resulting in substantial production
losses besides causing consequential damage to the
adjoining equipment as well.
For example, when the equipment like surge arrestors operating
at extra high voltagefail, they explode like a
bombmany a times resulting in scattering of solid porcelain
pieces to a larger distance causing damage to the
adjoining equipment. Similar situation is also observed during
incident of fire in electrical switchboards due to
heavy short circuit.
Unless regular equipment maintenanceis carried out adopting any
of the maintenance systems
discussed in succeeding points, unscheduled failure of the
equipment would go on resulting into
large scale production losses in the industries on one hand and
would increase the cost of
maintenance on the other hand, as the cost of breakdown
maintenance is normally more than
that of other types of maintenance.
Breakdown Maintenance Management (BMM)
The heading itself implies simple and straightforward logic When
a machine breaks down, fix it. This is a
reactive maintenance management techniquethat waits for machine
or equipment failure before any
maintenance action is taken; however, it is actually a
no-maintenance approach of the management.
No expenditure is made on maintenance until a machine or system
fails to operate.
Few plants adopt a true run-to-failure management philosophy, as
in almost all instances, the industries carry out
basic preventive maintenance tasks such as lubrication,
monitoring of operating parametersand other
machine adjustments.
In this type of maintenance, however, the electrical machines
and other plant equipment are neither rebuilt, nor
are any major repairs made until the machine fails to operate
.
High spare parts inventory cost
Or high value due to replacement of machine
In absence of anticipated periodic maintenance requirements, the
industry that adopting BMM must be able to
react immediatelyto all possible failures within the plant.
This reactive method of management forces the maintenance
department to maintain large spare parts
inventories that may include spare machines or at least all
major components for all the critical equipment in the
plant. The alternative is to rely on the equipment vendors that
can provide immediate delivery of required spare
parts to repair the equipment.
BMM is the most expensive method of maintenance management.The
major costs associated with this type
of maintenance management are as follows.
High overtime labour costs
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Loss of profit due to partial or total stoppage of production
(photo credit: eagnews.org)
equipment.
Therefore, it is more appropriate to
identify the defect before failure to plan
repair / replacement. Though, the
equipment breakdowns cannot be
avoided in totality, but incidents can be
reduced to great extent with appropriate
type of maintenance.
Will be continued stay in the tune
