METHODOLOGY FOR THE DETECTION AND PREVENTION OF FAILURES IN INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION EQUIPMENT

This paper constitutes a methodological proposal in the area of industrial maintenance. It combines maintenance philosophies and techniques, elements of statistical process control and statistical data analysis to obtain two methodologies: the first one for the detection of chronic failures in industrial equipment and the second one to prevent sporadic failures in the same equipment. Both methodologies are intended to be applied to production processes, as data acquisition is relatively easier than in service processes. However, they can be easily adapted to service processes as well. Their goal is to increase production equipment availability in order to improve product quality and quantity, increasing in this way the competitiveness of the company in the market. The methodologies were applied to a cosmetics production facility with favorable results.