Equipment Early Warning and Maintenance Management Guide

The guide provides practical advice on setting up and maintaining early warning systems for equipment, covering key topics such as configuring early warning parameters, automating work order generation, and optimizing maintenance processes. It helps businesses reduce the risk of equipment failure, improve maintenance efficiency, and ensure stable production operations.

Why are equipment alerts and maintenance work orders so important?

Our equipment is like a "production partner." If it goes on strike, the whole process can be paralyzed.Setting up an early warning system is like giving the equipment a "health bracelet" that can immediately detect problems. And the maintenance order management system is a tool for "tracking problems to their roots.The combination of the two can prevent problems before they arise, and quickly respond to any that do, saving both time and money.

is the core logic of the system.

First step: Figure out which parameters need to be monitored.

The key indicators are different for different kinds of equipment.For example, electric motors need to be checked for temperature and vibration, and air compressors need to be monitored for pressure.I suggest that you first talk to the manufacturer or someone with a lot of experience. Make a list of the parameters that are most likely to cause problems. Don't try to monitor everything at once, because you'll end up missing the most important things.

Step two: Set a reasonable threshold value.

If the threshold is set too sensitive, there are false alarms every day. If it's set too loose, then when something happens, it's not detected.A little trick: refer to the standard values in the equipment manual, and then fine-tune them based on historical operating data.For example, if the normal temperature is 50-70 ° C, the threshold can be set at 65 ° C (warning) and 75 ° C (emergency).

Step 3: Choose the right channels and responsible parties.

The alerts are easily missed in the deluge of messages in the group chat, and emails may arrive too late.I recommend the work order robot on WeChat Work or DingTalk. It can @ the corresponding team directly, and can also be set up with upgrade rules, such as automatically notifying the supervisor if the problem has not been handled within 30 minutes.

How can we keep the work orders for maintenance from getting out of hand?

Automatic creation of work orders: Goodbye to filling out forms by hand.

When the system detects a problem, it automatically creates a work order that includes the equipment number, a description of the problem, and a photo of the scene (if there is an IoT camera on site).When a repairman scans a QR code with his cellphone, he can immediately see the repair history of the item, saving him much time and effort.

Priorities and deadlines must be clearly defined.

Don't mark all work orders as "urgent"! Suggestion: divide into three levels.

- High priority (for example, a complete shutdown of equipment): 2 hours.

- Medium level (degraded performance): 24-hour response.

– Low-risk (preventative maintenance): Completed within the week.

Closed-loop management: There must be feedback on whether the repairs are good or not.

When the repair is complete, the mechanic must report the results, upload photos of the parts replaced, or upload the test report.The system automatically marks the status of work orders, and can also generate a maintenance ledger. This makes it especially convenient to analyze the data at year's end. For instance, which equipment is causing problems? Should it be replaced or repaired? The data speaks for itself.

This is a case of a warning system and service request system working together in action.

A food factory installed vibration monitoring on its packaging machine, and discovered that the vibration value of one bearing rose slowly over a period of three days.The system automatically created a low-priority work order, and during routine weekend maintenance, the repair crew discovered that the machine lacked lubrication.If there had been no warning, the machine would have had to be shut down for two days to replace the bearings.

These are the most common pitfalls to avoid.

- Don't rely on manual data recording, which is prone to omissions and errors.

- The warning rules should be checked once every quarter, and the threshold values adjusted as the equipment ages.

- Newcomers must be trained. We have had cases of maintenance workers who couldn't read a vibration spectrum diagram, and took a warning as a false alarm.