Several types and maintenance programs are on board on the different types of vessels worldwide.
The maintenance plan for each ship is carried out or tailored to the required vessel, according to the type of work that was designed, the machinery it has, and the regulations of the flag and its class.
But before all this, we must understand the three types of maintenance that exist and that companies use for the different equipment mounted on board according to the geographical position of the ship and the company’s needs.
The three maintenances are:

CORRECTIVE: Corrective maintenance is when we work on damaged equipment or only perform an intervention on the equipment when it breaks down.
This type of maintenance is not the most recommended since the useful life of the equipment is reduced since we need to follow the manufacturer’s recommendations regarding unit maintenance.
The stops and costs of the unit due to breakage are generally of great impact with respect to other types of maintenance, bringing consequences to the company due to delays, charter losses, and a bad reputation.

PREDICTIVE: Preventive inspections are carried out on the equipment to determine its status and what type of intervention we must carry out.
For example, a water pump carries out vibration and temperature measurement tests. With this type of inspection, we determine the state of the bearings and the wear of internal moving parts in accordance with their performance under certain equipment operating conditions.

PREVENTIVE: Preventive maintenance is used by all industries and maritime transport. It is the maintenance recommended by the manufacturers of the different equipment to which they had to pass certain types of inspections and tests of the equipment to be able to be installed on board. The different Class Societies carry out these tests: manufacturing materials, the assembly process, and equipment performance. In the case of ships, preventive maintenance is found within the different types of maintenance plans.

MAINTENANCE PLANS: They are part of the ship’s SMS (Safety Management System). Currently, there are several types, automatic or manual, in which work orders or different types of maintenance interventions on the equipment are exposed to the different heads of departments to be carried out. In other words, to be used, maintenance plans must be approved by the flag because they must be adequate and certified so that the different onboard equipment meets the national and international requirements stipulated in SOLAS and MARPOL.

At SOUTHERN OCEAN MARINE ENGINEERING SOLUTIONS, we are specialists in implementing and adapting maintenance plans for different utilities and types of vessels. In future blogs, we will delve into maintenance plans and their types.