Maintenance Strategies

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No doubt about it, COVID-19 has changed the way most—if not all—businesses operate. While food and beverage processors have had to struggle with supply chain issues, robotics and system suppliers have had to face similar supply chain problems, plus come up with solid methods of service and maintenance support during the pandemic.

While not all processors have machine shops with CNCs in their plants, most food and beverage plants do have process and packaging equipment that would benefit from smarter maintenance.

At a press conference at Process Expo on Wednesday, October 9, the Food Processing Suppliers Association (FPSA) announced the launch of the Food Industry Technician (FIT) certification program in association with Lincoln Technical Institute.

In the last five years, augmented and virtual reality technologies have been making steady inroads to the manufacturing world, especially in finding useful applications in maintenance. Today, IIoT and Industry 4.0 technologies play an ever expanding role in maintenance.

Moving to a web-based CMMS implementation has the potential to save money for companies that are self-hosting the systems internally, but robust security is a necessity.

In Part one of this article, published in the July 2018 issue of Food Engineering, we looked at the costs of reactive maintenance strategies, preventive maintenance (PM), risk-based PM strategies—and whether any form of PM could provide the depth-of-maintenance knowledge as that of a predictive maintenance (PdM) system. In the second part of this article, we’ll look at TPM, integrating CMMS and EAM systems with ERP systems, training and manpower issues and IIoT integration.