The Preventative Maintenance application provides the capability to schedule, track and manage preventative maintenance tasks based on the number of days a machine has been in cycle. This article explains how to use the Preventative Maintenance application to schedule, track and manage preventative maintenance tasks for your machines.

Article Topics

This article covers the following topics.

• Accessing the Preventative Maintenance Application
• MachineMetrics Preventative Maintenance Process
• Scheduling Preventative Maintenance Tasks
  • Maintenance Task Information Requirements
• Tracking Maintenance Task Schedules and Progress
  • Evaluating Maintenance Task Schedule Progress
  • Searching the Preventative Maintenance Task Schedules
    • Searching Maintenance Schedules by Task Name
    • Searching Maintenance Schedules by Machine
• Completing a Preventative Maintenance Task
  • Viewing the Maintenance Task Incident

Accessing the Preventative Maintenance Application

You can access the Preventative Maintenance application from the MachineMetrics Health applications menu as follows:

1. Select Health from the MachineMetrics main menu. The Alarms application page will display as shown in the example below.
   
   
   
   
2. Click the application pull-down menu and select Preventative Maintenance as highlighted below.
   
   
   
   
3. The Preventative Maintenance application page will display listing all preventative maintenance tasks that have been scheduled for all machines. If no tasks have been created and scheduled, the page will display "No maintenance schedules have been created yet" as shown below. 

MachineMetrics Preventative Maintenance Process

Using MachineMetrics for preventative maintenance on your machines involves the following activities:

1. A preventative maintenance task schedule is created for a machine in the Preventative Maintenance application.
2. Once the designated number of days has passed, the Preventative Maintenance application generates an Incident assigned to the appropriate MachineMetrics user.
3. The MachineMetrics user responsible for ensuring that the maintenance task is completed responds to the incident and opens the Preventative Maintenance application to find the maintenance task and review the instructions provided, and indicates that the maintenance is being started. 
4. When the maintenance task is complete, the responsible user opens the Preventative Maintenance application to indicate task completion, and the Incident is resolved.
5. The maintenance task in the Preventative Maintenance application is moved to the Maintenance History with the following information:
   • Date the maintenance task was completed
   • Assigned user responsible for maintenance task completion
   • Amount of time taken to complete the task

Scheduling Preventative Maintenance Tasks

To schedule a preventative maintenance task for a machine, do the following:

1. From the Preventative Maintenance application page, click the Add button. 
2. In the Preventative Maintenance // Create page, complete the required information as specified in Maintenance Task Information Requirements. The following figure shows an example of a completed Preventative Maintenance Create page for a "Replace Machine Coolant" task.
   
   
   
   
3. When the required information is complete, click the Save button at the bottom of the page. The system will return to the Preventative Maintenance application page with the new task added as shown in the following example of the "Replace Machine Coolant" task. Note that the number of days specified in the Create page is converted to the equivalent number of hours.
   
   

Maintenance Task Information Requirements

To create a new preventative maintenance task for a machine, you will need to provide the following information:

• Name: Text entry field used to describe the maintenance task to be done.
  • Example: "Replace machine coolant"
• Machine: Pull-down menu used to select the machine targeted for the maintenance task. 
• Days In-Cycle Before Triggering: Number of operating days (24 hours of operating time) the machine must be operating in cycle before the Preventative Maintenance application will trigger the maintenance task incident.
• Trigger: "Days in-cycle" is currently the only supported trigger for maintenance task incidents.
• Instructions: Pull-down menu used to select the instructions for completing the maintenance task.
  • Note: Instructions must have been added in the Instructions Health application before they will be available for selection in this field.
• Last Completed: Calendar tool that allows you to select the most recent date that the maintenance task was done on the machine. Default is the current date.
• Action: Group of fields that are used to specify the following: type of action, MachineMetrics user responsible for ensuring the action is completed, and the priority of the action.
  • Type: The type of action that the Preventative Maintenance application will take when the maintenance task is triggered. Currently the only supported action is to generate an Incident.
  • Assignee: Pull-down menu used to select the MachineMetrics user responsible for ensuring the maintenance task is completed.
  • Priority: Pull-down menu used to assign the maintenance task priority. Available settings are Low, Medium and High.

Tracking Maintenance Task Schedules and Progress

Once preventative maintenance tasks have been scheduled, the Preventative Maintenance application serves as a searchable repository that allows you to be able to track the progress of various maintenance tasks and machines.

Evaluating Maintenance Task Schedule Progress

The following figure shows an example of scheduled maintenance tasks for checking and replacing machine coolant in two machines (CNC 104 and CNC 106):

Evaluating the preventative maintenance task progress bars shown in the above figure, the following can be inferred:

• Machine CNC 104 is very nearly due having its coolant replaced. The progress bar above indicates that 1176 operating hours in cycle have been completed since the coolant was last replaced, and the coolant should be replaced every 1200 operating hours (50 operating days). The person responsible for doing the replacement may want to go ahead and complete this high-priority task depending on their availability in the near future.
• Machine CNC 106 is overdue its coolant check. However, since its coolant was very recently replaced, this task may not be considered as urgent. 

Searching the Preventative Maintenance Task Schedules

The search field in the Preventative Maintenance application allows you to search for maintenance tasks by task name and by machine. You only need to enter part of the name/machine, and the application will automatically search and filter the tasks shown based on the text you entered as shown in the following sections.

Searching Maintenance Schedules by Task Name

The following figure shows a search for the Check Machine Coolant maintenance task name.

Searching Maintenance Schedules by Machine

The following figure shows a search for the maintenance task schedules associated with machine CNC 104.

Completing a Preventative Maintenance Task

To complete a preventative maintenance task so that it can be tracked in MachineMetrics, do the following:

1. Click on the task in the Preventative Maintenance application page. The maintenance task page will display as shown in the following example.
   
   
   
   
   1. Review the maintenance task instructions provided as necessary. When the maintenance task is ready to be started, click the Start Maintenance button.
2. The Start Maintenance button will change to Complete Maintenance, and the application will start a timer to track the amount of time that passes before the task is completed.
   
   
   
   
3. When the task is complete, click the Complete Maintenance button. The progress bar will reset to zero (0) and task will be moved to the Maintenance History table with the following information:
   
   
   • Date the task was completed
   • User who completed the task
   • Time taken to complete the task

The following figure shows the completed task used in this example.

Viewing the Maintenance Task Incident

Clicking on an entry in the Maintenance History will open the Incidents page for that maintenance task. This page displays the incident details, incident log, and provides the ability to reopen the incident. The following figure shows an example of this page for the above maintenance history example.