Why is Proactive Maintenance Important?
(Video Transcript)
Hi Everyone. I’m on my way to our veterinarian’s office to take one of our cats – Marko – to the vet. It is time for his annual examination. So, just like we do annual maintenance on our equipment, well we do it on our pets as well. So, Marko is going to be subject to some Predictive Maintenance and to some Preventive Maintenance. So more on that when we get to the vet’s office.
Here’s Marko. He’s not a very happy cat at the moment. But this has to be done.
Ok. We’re here!
So, I’m in the vet’s office. And like I mentioned, we’re here for Predictive Maintenance and Preventive Maintenance. Well, we got in the mail, this card about Marko. And this is similar to what you would get out of your CMMS or your EAM system. And it’s the kind of maintenance that Marko needs on an annual basis. So, I want to talk about two of the things that are on this list.
The first thing is bloodwork. So today Marko is going to get a CBC or a Complete Blood Count. So, some of the things that they’ll be looking at is they’ll be checking him for anemia and his white blood count to see if there’s any kind of infection going on.
But in terms of anemia, really what this is, is Predictive Maintenance or Condition Based Maintenance (CBM). So, the doctor is looking for some sort of a condition that would be a symptom or a Potential Failure Condition, that a failure is in the process of occurring.
So, this we can relate to the P-F Curve. The x-axis is age and the y-axis is the Resistance to Failure. So, the whole point about Predictive Maintenance is that it really depends on how quickly failure occurs – not how often failure occurs. So, obviously the doctor is going to be looking for a specific count when it comes to anemia, so he’ll know if there’s a Potential Failure Condition going on.
And the reason why we do the bloodwork every year is because we want to head it off at the pass. And we don’t want to encounter any kind of secondary effects if Marko were to have anemia.
The other thing is vaccinations. Marko is here for his annual Rabies shot. Now the reason why he has to get it every year is because it “wears out” or “wears off.” So just like you might change the oil in your motor on a scheduled basis every year, Marko is going to get his Rabies shot.
So, there you have it. Just like equipment, our pets are subject to Proactive Maintenance…oooh…the doctor is here I’ll finish later…
So, I’m here with Marko. And I told the doctor that he’s been doing this “coughing thing.” But we thought that it might have just been hairballs. But they did an x-ray and it appears that Marko either has bronchitis or asthma. So, we’re waiting for the bloodwork to come back to see if he’s got a white count to see what it is. Huh my Marko…oh…poor kitty.
That’s why it’s important to make sure that you do Proactive Maintenance – not just on your pets – but on your equipment. Because when you do things like oil analysis or infrared thermography, Condition Based Maintenance techniques can tell you a lot about your equipment. And you can catch things before they become serious failures.
So, in Marko’s case, we’ve caught it quickly enough and we’ll be able to treat whatever he has – whether it’s asthma or bronchitis. And that’s because we took the time to do the right Proactive Maintenance. Right Marko? Yeah…that’s my orange cat.
So, the results are in. Marko has asthma. So, he’s going to have to have medicine twice a day until he stops having so many attacks. Well, this is why it is so important to make sure we do the right kind of maintenance – not just on our pets – but on our equipment as well.
And Reliability Centered Maintenance is a process you can use to help you figure out exactly what kind of Proactive Maintenance you should be doing, as well as some Default Strategies that might be needed. Like maybe changing a training program or maybe doing some Failure Finding on your Protective Devices. I’m Nancy Regan with Marko, my orange tabby cat. Thank you for watching.
