What Is Preventive Maintenance?
Preventive maintenance (PM) is the regular and routine maintenance of equipment and assets in order to keep them running and prevent any costly unplanned downtime from unexpected equipment failure.
A successful maintenance strategy requires planning and scheduling maintenance of equipment before a problem occurs. A good preventive maintenance plan also involves keeping records of past inspections and the servicing of equipment.
Because of the complexity of maintaining a preventive maintenance schedule for a large amount of equipment, many companies use preventive maintenance software to organise their required preventive maintenance tasks.
What are the Types of Preventive Maintenance?
Preventive maintenance is a proactive approach used by industries to ensure the longevity and efficiency of their equipment and assets.
By performing routine maintenance tasks, potential issues are identified and resolved before they lead to costly breakdowns and downtime. To gain a deeper understanding of this essential maintenance strategy, let’s delve into the different types of preventive maintenance.
#1. Time-Based Maintenance (TBM)
Time-based maintenance is one of the most common and straightforward types of preventive maintenance. In TBM, maintenance tasks are scheduled based on specific time intervals.
For example, equipment may undergo maintenance every month, quarter, or annually, regardless of its usage. This approach is ideal for equipment that doesn’t operate continuously but still requires regular care to prevent deterioration.
#2. Usage-Based Maintenance (UBM)
Usage-based maintenance, also known as meter-based maintenance, relies on the actual utilization of equipment. Maintenance tasks are triggered based on specific benchmarks, such as the number of kilometers traveled, hours of operation, or production cycles completed.
For instance, a vehicle may receive maintenance after every 10,000 kilometers. UBM ensures that maintenance is performed precisely when it’s needed, reducing unnecessary servicing.
#3. Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM)
Condition-based maintenance takes a proactive stance by monitoring the real-time condition of assets. Maintenance is only performed when specific indicators or parameters show signs of decreasing performance or impending failure.
For example, if a critical component’s vibration levels reach a predefined threshold, maintenance is scheduled to replace or lubricate the part. CBM maximizes equipment uptime and minimizes unnecessary maintenance tasks.
#4. Predictive Maintenance (PdM)
Predictive maintenance is the most advanced form of preventive maintenance. It involves using sophisticated condition-monitoring tools and techniques to continuously track equipment’s performance and condition.
Maintenance is triggered when certain thresholds or parameters are breached, indicating an impending issue.
Examples include monitoring vibration levels in bearings or identifying thermal hotspots in electrical systems. PdM optimizes maintenance schedules and reduces unplanned downtime to a minimum.
#5. Risk-Based Maintenance (RBM)
Risk-based maintenance combines elements of condition-based and predictive maintenance. It assesses an asset’s criticality and the potential consequences of its failure.
Assets with higher risk factors receive more frequent monitoring and maintenance, while lower-risk assets undergo less frequent inspections. RBM ensures that resources are allocated efficiently to protect the most crucial aspects of a facility’s operations.
#6. Calendar-Based Maintenance
Calendar-based maintenance is similar to time-based maintenance but is specific to a calendar year. The equipment receives maintenance during predefined periods or seasons, ensuring that it remains operational during peak demand times.
This approach is common in industries where seasonal variations affect production or service requirements.
When is Preventive Maintenance Required?
The exact requirement for preventive maintenance will vary depending on the equipment and the operation it is performing.
Industry uses standards to help determine schedules for maintenance so that assets do not run to failure. These guidelines will also cover the type of inspection or maintenance that is needed.
Ideally, by following guidelines set down by manufacturers or standards, a PM schedule should ensure proactive maintenance rather than having to resort to reactive maintenance when something has already begun to fail.
Following this type of predictive maintenance schedule, through tasks such as condition monitoring, requires accurate recording of inspections and servicing against an understanding of the lifespan of a particular piece of equipment. These records will help determine when preventive maintenance is required.
What Are the Challenges of preventive maintenance?
There are some challenges with doing regular preventive maintenance. However, in our view, these don’t outweigh the benefits.
Finding the optimal time to do it is tricky. A regular schedule is the key to finding the best time to shut down for maintenance. And the downtime is typically where we see the most pushback from executives and managers who aren’t thrilled with this process.
It will cause shutdowns. There’s no way around it. To perform maintenance on your equipment, the line must stop.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This is an old adage for a reason. You may be shutting down for your scheduled maintenance when no problems actually exist. The shutdown does come at a productivity cost, so… is it worth it?
Some manufacturers solve this issue by performing predictive maintenance instead. It’s a more complex process that is data driven, and analyzes how your assets are performing in real time. All’s well? No shutdown.
But if you find problems, that’s when you act. It reduces downtime, and you’re not replacing any parts while they’re still good to go. The downside of this approach is complexity and connectivity.
If you don’t have state-of-the-art machinery, you won’t get the data analytics that this process requires. That’s why the majority of manufacturers today are using the preventive approach.
What are the Benefits of Preventive Maintenance?
Many facilities management teams choose to operate under an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” management style, but relying solely on deferred maintenance leaves your facility vulnerable to added costs and lost productivity. Performing routine preventive maintenance ensures your facility runs efficiently and offers you peace of mind.
Here is the 7 most important benefits of the preventive maintenance:
#1. Lengthen asset lifespan
Arguably, the most important benefit of preventive maintenance is lengthened lifespan of assets. Keeping your equipment in good condition allows it to run longer, lowering costs.
MTBF mean time between failures is a common KPI used by facilities leaders to make informed maintenance decisions.
Tracking information like MTBF allows you to plan preventive maintenance at just the right moment, catching the equipment before a breakdown.
The power of a good downtime tracking system is so impactful that 78% of companies that track and implement preventive maintenance report seeing an increase in their equipment’s lifespan.]
#2. Lower risk of breakdowns
Decreased risk of breakdowns is another key benefit of preventive maintenance. In fact, most of the benefits listed here occur primarily as a result of lowered risk of breakdown. Waiting to perform maintenance until failure puts your facility at risk for lost productivity and a damaged reputation.
Only about 10% or less of industrial equipment ever truly wears out from proper use– this means that 90% of mechanical failures are due to preventable problems, avoidable with a good preventative maintenance plan in place.
By proactively scheduling maintenance you can significantly lower the risk of your equipment failing, giving you peace of mind as a facilities leader.
#3. Increase efficiency
Along with lasting longer, equipment that sees routine preventive maintenance also runs more efficiently. OEE, Overall Equipment Effectiveness, is a commonly used maintenance management KPI that measures efficiency. OEE rates equipment in three categories: availability, performance, and quality.
A piece of equipment like an HVAC unit sees improvement across the board as a result of preventive maintenance.
- Availability: Downtime for reactive maintenance is typically longer than downtime for scheduled preventive maintenance, choosing preventive maintenance means more uptime and availability of equipment.
- Performance: Properly maintained HVAC units can better maintain air at a set temperature and disperse it evenly throughout the space.
- Quality: An HVAC unit that regularly has the air filter and coils cleaned will heat and cool more effectively and produce cleaner, higher quality air.
#4. Decrease unplanned downtime
Whether you decide to rely on reactive or preventive maintenance, machine downtime is inevitable when maintenance is being performed.
However, downtime can be significantly reduced by scheduling maintenance in advance with a preventive maintenance plan.
In the case of a reactive maintenance repair, the machine’s downtime might be extended by wait times to see specialized mechanics or shipment time of necessary parts.
When preventive maintenance is performed you have the opportunity to schedule the procedure at a convenient time for you and your facility (i.e. when occupants are out of the building or operations have concluded for the day), minimizing disruptions in production and efficiency.
#5. Promote health and safety
Accurately tracking and performing preventive maintenance can also improve the health and safety of your facility.
In the context of preventive maintenance, health and safety are often thought of as primarily a concern in facilities with dangerous equipment, but health and safety are important in every facility even office buildings and schools.
Tracking preventive maintenance with a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) will allow you to oversee all equipment in your facility and store important safety information in one digital hub.
Using CMMS software also simplifies safety audits with a few clicks on a smartphone, the complete maintenance history and safety protocols for all equipment items will become available.
You can also store and document valuable workplace safety tips to share with your team. Preventive maintenance and CMMS software can assist your facility with fire safety readiness.
#6. Boost customer satisfaction
Ensuring equipment is always running as efficiently as possible directly translates to cost savings and increased revenue, but it also helps to create a strong brand image and boost customer satisfaction.
In facilities manufacturing goods for sale, practicing preventive maintenance to avoid breakdowns and maintain the quality of the goods produced guarantees customer satisfaction with the product, which in turn strengthens brand image.
Even in facilities that don’t produce goods for sale, “customers” can be the staff or students working on site. In office spaces and schools a comfortable environment is proven to increase productivity—preventive maintenance can ensure productivity is never lost to a broken-down HVAC unit.
#7. Save money
All of the reasons listed above lead back to one ultimate benefit of preventive maintenance: it saves money. Unplanned maintenance typically costs 3 to 9 times more than planned maintenance.
Emergency reactive maintenance has to accommodate the cost of rushed shipping on necessary machinery parts, compensation for specialized technicians, and lost sales revenue or productivity while the equipment isn’t in use.
Even worse, failing to properly implement preventive maintenance could result in the need for a full equipment replacement, causing costs to soar.
The upfront costs of performing preventive maintenance may seem intimidating at first, especially if your facility is operating under a tight budget. However, maintaining your equipment is an investment in your company’s future.
What Are the Disadvantages of Preventive Maintenance?
Now let’s look at the Disadvantages of preventive maintenance:
- Upfront costs of preventive maintenance keeping equipment regularly maintained requires a bit of an investment
- More labor-intensive, so you’ll need enough staff on hand
- Potential for over-maintenance
The last point is one of the major drawbacks of preventive maintenance. There comes a point where if you’re doing too much, the costs of your PM program actually outweigh the costs of reactive maintenance, especially for non-critical assets.
#1. Potential for Over-Maintenance
Even for mission-critical equipment, you might still run the risk of over-maintenance. Some types of failures aren’t as threatening to your operations as others, and if you’re putting resources into preventing every conceivable type of problem, you may actually be wasting resources on PM.
It’s important to strike a balance between failure prevention and reactive repair work.
When preventive maintenance programs are applied too broadly, they can end up wasting a great deal of money. In some cases, components, parts, even entire machines should be run to failure.
For example, a typical office light bulb should simply be left to operate until it burns out. Nothing catastrophic happens if that lightbulb fails so prematurely replacing it or even periodically inspecting it on a predetermined schedule wastes resources.
#2. Unexpected Failures
In addition, certain components and parts may fail randomly to the point where preventive maintenance can do nothing to consistently avoid that failure. In those cases, it may be more prudent to consider ways to deal with the consequences effectively.
The frequency of preventive maintenance tasks should not be set based on mean time between failure, which is common. Instead, it’s important to make this decision based on the useful life of a particular component.
#3. Continuous Training Is Needed for Success
Another downside of some preventive maintenance programs is the fact that ongoing education and training of the field technicians is ignored.
The bottom line is if your maintenance technicians do not understand the importance of your preventive maintenance tasks or are not properly trained to do them, they will fail to do them completely and well.
#4. Set Clear Expectations
Some organizations also do not clearly define the difference between failure finding tasks and preventive maintenance tasks. When someone conducts failure finding tasks, they are inspecting a part that may have already failed but is not yet affecting the bigger piece of equipment or a production line.
It’s important that preventive maintenance tasks are done on an ongoing, consistent basis. To try to tackle all preventive maintenance tasks in a one- or two-week period of time is often a waste effort.
Finally, a preventive maintenance program should have a champion who is responsible for assigning and improving maintenance tasks as well as leading the effort to collect accurate ongoing information in CMMS.
What are the Examples of Preventive Maintenance?
Common examples of preventive maintenance tasks are regular cleaning, lubrication, replacing of parts, and equipment repairs. Preventive maintenance scheduling requirements differ depending on the equipment being maintained.
Specific examples of preventive maintenance within a manufacturing facility include ensuring equipment in the production line is working efficiently.
Other examples include checking that your HVAC, heating, ventilation, or air conditioning systems are inspected, cleaned, and repaired if necessary, and your water, sanitation, and electrical systems are functioning properly within safety and compliance levels.