maintenance matters What Preventative Maintenance Provides Early inspection and repair can stop a series of cascading events. By: Joel Levitt F Failures are commonly the result of a cas-cade of events. This series of events can be slightly or grossly different for different failures. Preventative maintenance developed for failures is basically an intervention that can interrupt the cascade. But, preventative maintenance does not address all types of failures. Failures that are random cannot be pre-dicted or even mitigated by preventative maintenance. While tire life can be impacted by a pre-ventative maintenance program that keeps them filled with air, replaces them when re-quired and matches duals, it has no or little impact on road hazards. Maintaining Bearings Bearings are frequently used for preventa-tive maintenance examples because it is easy to see the details of the deterioration — at least easier than some other compo-nents. As the bearing deteriorates energy ef-ficiency and performance also deteriorate. Increased friction inside the bearing ties up horsepower producing heat instead of rotation. Other symptoms might be roughness, noises and excess heat. Let’s say that this is the cascade for a bearing failure: ■ Dirt enters the bearing. ■ Dirt mixes with grease. ■ Grease becomes less slippery and Preventative maintenance is an organized attack on the cause tree. CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • February 2014 42 Image courtesy of michaeljung/iStock/Thinkstock
CMM – Archives February 2014: 42
