Industrial maintenance: from the basics to innovation, the revolution is underway

Industrial maintenance: from fundamentals to innovation, the revolution is taking place

In the industrial sector, as in many fields, maintenance plays a crucial role in preventing failures, repairing them and also improving the operation of an installation. Karim Kalfane, lecturer at the IUT Louis Pasteur of Schiltigheim - University of Strasbourg, and Alsace delegate of the French Association of Engineers and Maintenance Managers (AFIM) , presents the different types of maintenance and innovations in this field.

Maintenance, essential for every installation

According to standard NF EN 13306: 2018, maintenance is defined as " all technical, administrative and management actions during the life cycle of an item, intended to maintain it or restore it to a state in which it is which he can perform the required function ,” recalls Karim Kalfane . The objective is thus to improve the availability of the installation by minimizing the downtime of production which extends from the detection of the technical problem to the restarting. “As soon as a function is to be fulfilled, maintenance is necessary”, sums up the expert. Automotive, aeronautics, agri-food, pharmaceutical or even nuclear, all industrial sectors have the need to integrate maintenance in order to preserve and optimize their installations.

Additional maintenance actions

There are three main categories of maintenance. The first is corrective maintenance . Its purpose is to restore function and itself includes two types of maintenance:

·        Emergency corrective maintenance : " it is necessary to act immediately by carrying out a repair in order to restore the use of the equipment ".

·        Deferred corrective maintenance : “ repairs are carried out to restore operation, pending a complete repair which must imperatively be planned. »

Preventive maintenance is carried out upstream of a failure that it specifically aims to avoid. This second category is subdivided into different types of preventive maintenance:

·        Systematic maintenance : it is carried out on a regular basis according to a certain time cycle, whatever the starting state of the asset. “ The frequency is defined on the basis of a timetable corresponding to a unit of use: number of kilometers travelled, number of openings and closings, number of ascents and descents, etc. »

·        Condition-based maintenance includes physical condition assessment, analysis, and any resulting maintenance actions.

oh    It includes predictive maintenance , “ often wrongly called ' predictive ' following a translation error, specifies Karim Kalfane . Predictive maintenance is carried out following a forecast obtained through repeated analysis or known characteristics and an evaluation of the significant parameters of the degradation of the asset. In a car, this corresponds to the brake pad warning light. It is a signal indicating that it is possible to cover a certain number of kilometers, while knowing that it will be necessary to plan an overhaul. »

oh    Non-predictive condition-based maintenance must be carried out urgently. “ It corresponds for example to the water temperature indicator. When it lights up, it is imperative to act without delay ”.

Improvement is the last category of maintenance. It aims, as its name suggests, to make changes, modifications and transformations likely to improve goods, equipment and/or installations.

The maintenance of tomorrow is built today

" One of the major problems in maintenance is the lack of integration of this aspect, which is crucial for the life of equipment and industrial installations, during the design ", laments the expert. With virtual reality and digital twins, which virtually reproduce a machine or a product, a revolution is taking place. "It will no longer be possible to consider maintenance separately because from the design stage, we will see if the machine can be disassembled, if it is accessible, if the hand can pass behind a component, etc...".

Overall, the industry is set to change significantly in the coming years. “ Most of the new technologies exist today in factories. These are augmented reality, 3D printing, intelligent logistics and even the RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) system ”, emphasizes Karim Kalfane. “ Maintenance is an essential component of the industry of the future and digital is of course at the heart of the transformations ”.

Multiple innovations in a sector of the future

The three challenges of maintenance are to collect all available data, analyze it and use it through interfaces allowing rapid and targeted decision-making. For the collection of information, we note the development of “ miniaturized physical, chemical and biological sensors, capable of giving a multitude of information on the state of the machines in real time (temperature, humidity, accelerometer, etc.) . RFID chips, which can be doubled with a GPS, allow easy access to all the characteristics of the machines in the field ,” explains the expert. To inspect a site or equipment that is difficult to access, the drone is already used and tends to be developed. “ It allows you to scan the wall of a dam or the wings of an airplane, for example, with high definition images. Depending on the data, we may decide to deepen the verification. »

The processing of the information collected is carried out with data mining and text mining " to use data collected and compared ". This data is used with next-generation computer-assisted maintenance management (CMMS), which incorporates features such as the oral recording of an intervention report with automatic conversion to writing. Networking is also done with the pairing of CMMS and other tools such as BIM (Building Information Modeling). “The objective of these new CMMS is to simplify reporting for the maintenance manager, to facilitate data analysis and to allow him to do his primary job, which is team leadership ,” explains Karim Kalfane.

While smart machines allow “ small corrective actions ” to be taken, the exoskeleton is a major innovation that makes it possible to reduce the difficulty of certain tasks. “ The maintenance professions evolve and continue to move. It is a sector of the future which is also in hypertension: 40,000 applications for industrial positions are expected in the coming years for only 20,000 graduates”, concludes Karim Kalfane.