Predictive maintenance

Predictive maintenance (PdM) techniques are designed to help determine the condition of in-service equipment in order to estimate when maintenance should be performed. This approach claims more cost savings over routine or time-based preventive maintenance, because tasks are performed only when warranted. Thus, it is regarded as condition-based maintenance carried out as suggested by estimations of the degradation state of an item. The main appeal of predictive maintenance is to allow convenient scheduling of corrective maintenance, and to prevent unexpected equipment failures. By taking into account measurements of the state of the equipment, maintenance work can be better planned (spare parts, people, etc.) and what would have been "unplanned stops" are transformed to shorter and fewer "planned stops", thus increasing plant availability. Other potential advantages include increased equipment lifetime, increased plant safety, fewer accidents with negative impact on environment, and optimized spare parts handling. Predictive maintenance differs from preventive maintenance because it does take into account the current condition of equipment (with measurements), instead of average or expected life statistics, to predict when maintenance will be required. Machine Learning approaches are adopted for the forecasting of its future states. Some of the main components that are necessary for implementing predictive maintenance are data collection and preprocessing, early fault detection, fault detection, time to failure prediction, and maintenance scheduling and resource optimization. Predictive maintenance has been considered one of the driving forces for improving productivity and a way to achieve just-in-time manufacturing.