For the proper functioning of ship and vessel assets and equipment, regular maintenance is highly recommended. It is better to plan and perform regular maintenance than to rely on broken equipment for your vessel. However, machinery and equipment for ships and vessels are often subject to defects, unnecessary repairs, and failures. Maintaining them is comparatively harder, and when it comes to repairing the broken ones, the situation gets even trickier. But this can be averted, you know. The whole situation of having to deal with broken and faulty equipment can be averted with an effective ship condition assessment. What if we work on maintenance, even before the equipment fails? With the help of early detection of equipment, unplanned failures, and inflated repair costs can be eliminated efficiently. Instead of condition-based monitoring, there can be periodic maintenance schedules which can help in averting unnecessary repairs. Predictive Maintenance is a comparatively lesser understood method of ship inspection that is critical for machinery and equipment operating in the ship. Let us find out some of the maintenance programs that are used on ships other than condition-based monitoring.

Periodic Maintenance System

A periodic or Scheduled Maintenance system is a time-based monitoring framework that is commonly used on ships. It includes regular inspections, overhauls as well as component replacement of a particular machine. This is an expensive process and requires substantial human resources.

Emergency Maintenance

As the name suggests, emergency maintenance occurs in the case of an emergency. Whenever there is ship equipment that fails or breaks down in the mid and subsequent repair is required, this is known as Emergency Maintenance. Unless the equipment is extremely important and critical for use, rescue services are generally avoided at the sea because of limited resources.

Preventive Maintenance

These are regular maintenance programs that focus on regular ship inspection. In addition to regular inspection, there is cleaning, lubrication, reassembling of equipment as per the maintenance schedule, and the conditional analysis of the equipment to keep them in ideal working order. The main purpose of preventive maintenance is to avert further damage or avoid unplanned failures later.

How are Predictive Maintenance Programs Beneficial?

These maintenance programs are part of a proactive approach to deal with any kind of unplanned delay due to equipment failure. Equipment failures can cause expensive off-shore downtime. The primary benefit of these maintenance programs is the ability to schedule corrective maintenance before the ship enters open water. It is even more difficult to extend rescue or maintenance in open water. These programs are also helpful for saving energy and are beneficial for overall efficiency gains. With the predictive maintenance programs, there is a significant reduction in component failures. There is also a substantial decrease in maintenance and repair costs. There are several benefits that can be extracted with these maintenance programs. With these maintenance programs, effective ship performance monitoring can be done. These maintenance programs utilize advanced technologies to monitor and predict asset maintenance. Sinotech Marine is a leading maritime company extending specialized maintenance programs and ship inspections. Connect with our marine experts to experience predictive maintenance at its best.