Is Prescriptive Maintenance the Right Option for Asset Management?

Prescriptive maintenance is one of the less-known maintenance types. However, this maintenance is proactive maintenance and for some industries, it is more effective than predictive & preventive maintenance. In this blog, we will know what prescriptive maintenance is and can you use this maintenance type in your business? So, without wasting any time let us begin!

What Is Prescriptive Maintenance?

Prescriptive maintenance is a type of proactive maintenance that helps organizations and avoids sudden equipment failure.

This maintenance is similar to predictive maintenance as it analyzes data history and other asset tracking technologies such as IoT (Internet of Things) is also used in prescriptive maintenance.

Therefore, prescriptive maintenance can tell you exactly when an asset will break, therefore you can ensure that you get the most out of your assets. by providing asset maintenance before failure.

When it is used with automated software it alerts the maintenance team about the upcoming maintenance work and scheduled maintenance activity. Equipment data is gathered, performance is analyzed, and performance indicators are used.

The software looks for patterns, and potential chances of a breakdown occurring, and maintenance action is taken accordingly.

Recommend To Read: What Are the Techniques Used in Predictive Maintenance?

What Are the Benefits of Prescriptive Maintenance?

The benefits of prescriptive maintenance are discussed below:

1. Minimizing Downtime

When assets get maintenance on time, it definitely helps asset in decreasing the downtime of an asset. Therefore, it is important to keep your downtime planned, because unplanned downtime leads to a waste of hours.

However, you can easily avoid downtime when you perform maintenance at regular intervals. Moreover, prescriptive maintenance is a very effective solution for decreasing downtime.

2. Increasing Productivity

Asset keeps working for longer hours with prescriptive maintenance assistance. As a result, ROI increases and productivity as well. Increasing productivity is one of the major goals of every organization but organizations are unable to do so. However, you can improve it with prescriptive maintenance.

3. Leveraging Historical Data

When you have historical data you can utilize that data for performing maintenance more effectively, especially with prescriptive maintenance as this maintenance specializes in providing maintenance on time. It can predict exactly when asset failure will occur, for this purpose data history and real-time information is utilized.

4. Optimizing Asset Life

You can get the most out of your asset when you keep your asset optimized by keeping it maintained. Prescriptive maintenance gives upkeep just when it is required so you can capitalize your asset to the fullest. Furthermore, you can provide maintenance on time which can enhance asset life.

5. Avoiding Sudden Asset Failure

Sudden asset failure is one of the biggest reasons that asset downtime is increased. Sudden asset failure leads to decreased asset performance, and it can impact the overall productivity of the organization and especially asset.

It also leads to increased maintenance expenses. Because regular asset maintenance is more cost-effective compared to sudden equipment failure maintenance.

What Are the Disadvantages of Prescriptive Maintenance?

The disadvantages of prescriptive maintenance are given below:

1. Skilled Maintenance Team

The team must be skilled so that they can work even under pressure. It is important that they do not forget any work or activity that needs to be done in each work order.

Most importantly they finish work quickly and effectively. However, understanding machines and running them is a time-consuming process.

2. Training

Having skill is one thing and following procedures in organizations in prescriptive maintenance is another thing. That is why providing training is important so that the maintenance support team knows the process in and out. Therefore, this process is costly and can be time-consuming as well.

3. Complex Implementation

Prescriptive maintenance is not easy to implement as you not only need a skilled and trained team, but you also need data history of assets. If you do not have data, then implementing Prescriptive maintenance will do no good to your business.

In Maintenance Strategies, How Crucial Is Prescriptive Maintenance?

Prescriptive maintenance can play a crucial role in your maintenance strategies as this maintenance type can be useful. For organizations that are equipped with lots of assets and equipment.

For those organizations, which are highly dependent on their assets for daily operation work, prescriptive maintenance can be a game-changer for them. As it can be an effective solution for decreasing downtime and avoiding sudden equipment failure.

However, there are several issues with prescriptive maintenance that we have given above. Therefore, organizations that can overcome the above-mentioned issues can implement prescriptive maintenance and the benefit will be clearly visible after implementing it.

Does Prescriptive Maintenance Hold the Future of Asset Management?

Yes, prescriptive maintenance holds the future of asset management but only for big-size organizations as it is expensive, and a lot of manpower is required.

Conclusion

Prescriptive maintenance is already used in several business sectors, such as aerospace, oil and gas industry, Chemical industry, etc. So, it has been used widely.

However. All these sectors are huge sectors. They have big equipment & even a small breakdown can impact productivity? And operation halt bold can occur.

Moreover, prescriptive maintenance is complex and requires a huge amount of expense and time. Data is required as well even after implementation.

So, we can say that prescriptive maintenance can be used in huge industries, but small businesses do not have many resources. So they can use predictive maintenance or any other type of proactive maintenance along with asset management software.

Also Read: Is Conveyor Maintenance Checklist Crucial? How Does It Help to Reduce Downtime?

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q.1 - Is Prescriptive Maintenance Widely Used in the Market?

Yes, it is widely used in the market. According to the markets & markets, “The prescriptive analytics market size to grow from USD 4.9 billion in 2021 to USD 14.3 billion by 2026, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 24.0% during the forecast period.”

Q.2 - What Is the Difference Between Predictive Maintenance and Prescriptive Maintenance?

With predictive maintenance, an organization can perform maintenance in a given estimated time with the assistance of software. Whereas prescriptive maintenance lets you know exactly when your asset will break so that you can perform maintenance before that so that you can make the most out of your assets with prescriptive maintenance.

Q.3 - What Is the Similarity Between Prescriptive Maintenance and Predictive Maintenance?

Prescriptive maintenance and predictive maintenance are both proactive maintenance types. Both let you plan & perform maintenance in advance before asset failure can occur.