Research Triangle Park, NC (12 March 2004) – ISA announces the third edition of its best-selling reference book: "Preventive Maintenance," by J. D. Patton. Equally applicable to equipment and facility maintenance, the new expanded edition shows how investing in a preventive maintenance (PM) program repays a company in longer equipment life, smoother operation, planning, and scheduling. The updated book includes enhanced techniques and insights along with new chapters dealing with computerized PM systems.
A recent ARC Advisory Group survey on plant automation maintenance reveals that the majority of plant maintenance budgets is directed to automation assets, including process automation systems (26%), field devices (25%), and control valves (19%). These three categories combined represent 70% of a total maintenance budget, which typically could reach $40 million for a large refinery. Good PM saves money over a product's life cycle. Patton comments, “Everything will fail sometime – biological, electrical, electronic, hydraulic, mechanical, nuclear, optical, and especially humans.
The best answer is to avoid the need to fix.” "Preventive Maintenance" addresses major types of maintenance; advantages and disadvantages of PM; designing a PM program; economics of PM; nondestructive testing; scheduling; metrics; and data issues. New technology has improved equipment quality, reliability and dependability by installing fault-tolerant, redundant components, and self-adjustments, as well as replacing hydraulic and mechanical components with more reliable electronic and optical operations. However, many components can still wear out, corrode, become punctured, vibrate excessively, become overheated by friction or dirt, or be damaged by humans.
Preventive maintenance allows planned work when production is not pushing, instead of expensive emergency repairs that may be required under disruptive conditions and result in lost revenue due to halted production. "Preventive Maintenance" (ISBN 1-55617-875-1) will be available for purchase on the ISANetwork, www.isa.org/shopISA , or by calling (919) 549-8411 as of 15 March. Review copy offered upon request.
About ISA
ISA—The Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society is a 33,000-member global, nonprofit, educational organization connecting people and ideas in automation + control. The Society fosters advancement in the theory, design, manufacture, and use of sensors, instruments, computers, and systems for automation + control in a wide variety of applications. In addition to hosting the largest conferences and exhibitions for automation + control in the Western Hemisphere, ISA is a leading technical training organization and a respected publisher of books, magazines, and standards.
ISA also serves the professional development and accreditation needs of Control Systems Engineers (CSE), automation professionals, control systems technicians, maintenance mechanics, and others within the field of automation + control.
