Strategic maintenance plan for a crawler excavator

application in a machine rental company

Abstract

In view of the need for an industrial equipment rental company to improve its internal conservation and maintenance processes to ensure the quality of its services and equipment, the objective of this study was to implement a strategic preventive maintenance plan for a crawler excavator. This machine was chosen as it has a high aggregate value in terms of its cost, maintenance, and rental, and it constantly performs load handling operations. It was decided to develop and implement a preventive maintenance plan to proactively detect failures and constant interventions, thereby reducing interruptions during the equipment's operation. Due to the company's initial situation, which operated without any equipment maintenance planning, methodologies were adopted for data collection through manufacturer information and interviews with the rental company's employees. By combining this information, it was possible to identify the important parts of the equipment and those that show the greatest wear and require the most maintenance stops. Based on this, periodic maintenance plans and a preventive maintenance checklist were developed and implemented with the rental company. After the implementation of these actions, it was possible to demonstrate, through the applied maintenance indicators, an increase in available hours of approximately 16.5%, an increase in the mean time between failures of approximately 216.5%, and a reduction in maintenance costs of approximately 76.0%.