Optimization of Maintenance Management Framework in LPG Cylinder Manufacturing

Abstract

Maintenance can be defined as actions necessary for retaining or restoring a piece of equipment, machine or system to the specified operating conditions to achieve its maximum useful life. Maintenance ensures that production plant and equipments are available for production with minimum cost and wastage. Any organization regardless of the size, technology, products and services must have a clear cut maintenance policy to meet its individual needs. Preventive maintenance is a set of activities that are performed on plant, equipment, machinery, and systems before the occurrence of a failure in order to protect them and to prevent or eliminate any degradation in their operating conditions. Predictive maintenance is the complement of preventive maintenance. Predictive maintenance determines equipment status before a breakdown occurs. Production may be stopped due to many reasons like breakdown of machine, maintenance work, labor issues, and inventory problems. It is necessary to reduce the breakdown of machine or equipment’s in the company for the efficient production to meet the demands. The main objective of this project is to study the breakdown of a critical machine in LPG cylinder manufacturing plant. The major breakdowns were observed in hydraulic press machine, Trimming and Joggling machine, SAW welding line & MIG MAG welding line. Breakdown history of each machine was analyzed from August 2019 to November 2019 and noticed that hydraulic press machine and trimming and joggling machine contribute major loss to the industry, hence detailed study was carried out to minimize loss. Production process and machine breakdown was studied using different analysis and inspection tools like fish bone diagram, why- why analysis and counter measures to determine the machine availability, machine availability was determined by MTTR and MTBF. Based on the problems root cause analyses were carried out to develop optimized maintenance management framework and improve new preventive maintenance schedule and checklist for hydraulic press machine and trimming and joggling machine.