Recently the Ordnance and Radar Repair Shop of the Jinan Military Area Command replaced its previous equipment repair mode that treats symptoms of the equipment but not the root cause, with preventive maintenance mode that can keep equipment always in optimum state.

　　In order to facilitate the change of modes, the repair shop sent technical personnel to grassroots units to gather information on the performance of the existing equipment, and their service information, their conditions during the exercises, their wear-out conditions and maintenance & repair record. On this basis, it established electronic maintenance & repair file for each newly acquired equipment.

　　The preventive maintenance & repair mode is to turn the concentrated maintenance & repair of equipment into regular ones so as to guard against possible trouble. In a preventive check, the technical personnel found, with the help of fault imaging scanner, the performance of a certain spare part on a new type of radar system was unstable and they immediately replaced it with new component part, thus they managed to ensure the normal operation of the radar in the exercise and implementation of tasks. The preventive mode has effectively reduced maintenance cost. For example since the implementation of the preventive maintenance & repair mode, the maintenance cost for each artillery has reduced by 30%.

　　By Xie Qingfa and Huang Chao

　　(November 17, PLA Daily)