AI Predictive Maintenance Isn’t as Hard as You Think

Since the beginning of mass manufacturing and automation, machinery has required maintenance in the form of time and material to fix the inevitable breakdowns. In its most basic form, maintenance is reactive and performed on machinery that is already broken. This means unplanned downtime, unpredictable lost production, and ultimately, lost profits. In the second maintenance iteration, modern factories, vehicle fleets, and even vending machine operations have implemented preventive maintenance programs. In this scenario, potentially downtime-causing wear items are replaced or serviced at regular intervals. While an improvement in terms of scheduling, this also means that machinery being “PM’d” (preventive maintenance-ed) must be out of service more than absolutely necessary.