Preventive maintenance (PM) has the potential to be a true operational gamechanger. This proactive approach to asset management can reduce downtime, prolong the life of your equipment, and improve your bottom line. But preventive maintenance doesn’t just happen. It requires comprehensive planning. Your pathway to an effective preventive maintenance program begins with adoption of an annual preventive maintenance plan.
The annual maintenance plan is your roadmap to implementation, continuity, and improvement. Consider the stark differences between a team with a clearly delineated annual maintenance program and a team that operates with an exclusively reactive maintenance mindset.
Why an annual preventive maintenance plan is important
A manufacturing operation with an annual preventive maintenance plan has the potential to function as a well-oiled machine. In this environment, your equipment is treated to routine maintenance, calibration, and tune-ups. You conduct regular internal safety inspections of your facilities. Your inventory management strategy is customized, automated, and informed by advanced analytics. You regularly consult maintenance history data to ensure each unique asset gets the attention it requires.
In short, your physical assets are operating at peak performance throughout their lifecycles, your facilities are always compliant with regulations, and your maintenance team has everything it needs to do its job well. You are used to operating at maximum efficiency. When performance flags, you’re accustomed to executing on corrective maintenance plans to quickly get equipment and facilities back in proper working condition.
Contrast this with a business that relies solely on reactive maintenance, where systems and equipment are only attended to after they fail. It’s a bit like waiting until the engine in your car stalls before changing the oil. The vehicle grinds to a halt, repair costs escalate, and you can’t predict how long it will be before mechanics can get the car up and running again.
Now, picture a business operating this way.
A purely reactive maintenance strategy is inevitably disruptive. If this is your sole strategy for implementing repairs, your maintenance team is constantly staying one step behind. Your physical assets become locked in a perpetual cycle of repair and recovery, compounding downtime, impeding productivity, delaying deliveries, and potentially even hurting your reputation with customers and partners. In other words, having a well-constructed annual preventive maintenance plan goes to the very heart of your organization’s productivity and success.
Preventive maintenance vs. reactive and corrective maintenance
Below, we identify some of the core differences between preventive maintenance and both reactive and corrective maintenance strategies, with an emphasis on the comparative benefits of preventive maintenance models.
Preventive maintenance
Preventive Maintenance is a proactive maintenance approach to the upkeep of your facilities and physical assets, and is characterized by regular maintenance, scheduled inspections, and coordinated inventory management.
A preventive maintenance strategy is designed to prevent equipment failures before they occur by performing tasks such as lubrication, calibration, cleaning, and parts replacement at regularly scheduled time-based or usage-based intervals.
Reactive maintenance
Preventive maintenance provides a strong counterpart to reactive maintenance. Also sometimes referred to as “run-to-failure” maintenance, reactive maintenance takes a hands-off approach to upkeep until equipment malfunctions or fails. Repairs are only initiated after a breakdown occurs.
The consequences of this approach may include prolonged downtime, a shortened lifespan for your physical assets, a higher risk of facing penalties and fines for non-compliance, greater repair costs, and unforeseen inventory shortages. In other words, reactive maintenance carries quite a few risks and costs that may not be associated with preventive maintenance strategies. In the short term, however, the reactive approach often wins out due to its comparatively low costs.
Corrective Maintenance
Like reactive maintenance, corrective maintenance is generally only triggered when issues arise with your equipment. Unlike reactive maintenance, these actions are usually applied before the point of malfunction or failure.
Corrective maintenance tasks may be triggered by evident equipment performance issues or by issues revealed in routine inspections. In fact, corrective maintenance actions are often initiated as a result of insights gained during preventive maintenance. This illustrates one way in which these differing maintenance strategies can work in coordination with one another.
The comparative benefits of preventive maintenance
Each of the models highlighted above may have its place in your overall maintenance strategy. That said, preventive maintenance often provides the best balance of operational efficiency, cost control, and risk management. The distinct benefits of a preventive maintenance program include:
- Reduction in unplanned downtime
- Extended life of critical equipment and physical assets
- Improved safety and regulatory compliance
- Minimization of costly repairs and replacements
- More accurate inventory forecasting
The core difference between preventive maintenance and either reactive or corrective maintenance is that the former is built on strategic foresight whereas the latter maintenance processes can often leave businesses reflecting, in hindsight, on the money and headaches they may have saved.
Maintenance planning and scheduling
While the benefits of a preventive maintenance program are clear, achieving the desired outcomes requires comprehensive planning and strategic scheduling. Your annual preventive maintenance plan should provide a platform for both of these components.
Below, we take a closer look at the differences between these components and discuss how your preventive maintenance schedule and preventive maintenance plan can work together in the construction and review of your annual maintenance program.
Preventive maintenance plan
This strategic document outlines all maintenance activities connected with each of your organization’s physical assets over the coming year, outlining the tasks required, materials needed, and outcomes expected.
The primary objective of a maintenance plan is to create a blueprint for the upkeep of each of your critical assets. The maintenance plan will typically indicate:
- Preventive maintenance tasks to be carried out
- Objectives of proposed maintenance activities
- Policies and procedures for conducting maintenance
- Health, safety, and environmental considerations
- Required resources, including spare parts, tools, and raw materials
Preventive maintenance schedule
This tactical tool provides a calendar of planned maintenance activities, and typically also includes personnel assignments. Your maintenance schedule will typically indicate:
- Tasks to be completed for each piece of equipment or physical asset
- Frequency of each task to be performed (i.e. daily, monthly, quarterly, etc.)
- Expected duration for each task
- Assignment of responsibilities to specific team members and maintenance technicians
- Date of assignment
Integrating a plan and schedule into your annual maintenance program
The planning and scheduling components should work hand in hand as part of your annual maintenance program. Your maintenance schedule should ultimately provide a framework for efficient, streamlined, and predictable execution of your maintenance plan. Together, these components give your maintenance teams the guidelines and structure needed to prioritize tasks, manage time, and allocate resources with maximum efficiency.
What types of maintenance can occur on an annual basis?
Certain maintenance tasks are best planned on an annual basis, in order to minimize disruption, allocate resources, and forecast costs. Below, we highlight key maintenance tasks that can be incorporated into your Annual Preventive Maintenance Plan:
- Comprehensive system checks, including in inspection of electrical, plumbing, and HVAC systems, as well as routine cleaning and replacement of filters, belts, valves, etc.
- Equipment calibration with annual testing and scheduled maintenance of machinery to ensure optimal performance
- Safety inspections including testing of equipment such as fire extinguishers, alarm systems, and shutoff valves, as well as annual review of procedural compliance with broader regulatory conditions
- Infrastructure maintenance with structural inspections and repairs of buildings, including roofing, plumbing, and foundation
- Seasonal preparations including weatherizing equipment and infrastructure for harsh seasonal conditions such as extreme hot, cold, or precipitation
How to create an annual maintenance plan
Implementing and managing a maintenance plan is a multi-step process that should result in maximized uptime, extended life expectancy, and improved regulatory compliance for your physical assets, including production equipment, vehicles, and facilities.
Below we outline some of the critical steps toward implementing and managing an effective preventive maintenance plan:
- Create a detailed inventory of all assets, including types, models, serial numbers, locations, and current condition, along with criticality scoring for each asset based on its role in operations, safety, and production. ABC analysis can help you derive meaningful criticality scores.
- Identify necessary maintenance tasks for each asset such as inspections, cleaning, lubrication, parts replacement, or calibrations. Incorporate manufacturer guides and recommendations into this step.
- Develop maintenance schedules, plotting out time, frequency, and seasonality based on the criticality, usage, and age of each asset.
- Allocate resources including budget estimates, work assignments, and identification of required tools, materials, and spare parts.
- Implement maintenance management software such as a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) to automate scheduling, tracking, inventory management, data analysis, and compliance documentation.
Best practices for annual maintenance plans
In order to truly enjoy the benefits of an effective annual maintenance plan, consider adopting some of the best practices outlined below:
- Risk-based prioritization: Assess the criticality and impact of each asset in the broader scope of your operation, prioritizing the frequency and nature of maintenance tasks for high-risk assets whose failure could cause significant operational disruptions.
- Scheduled downtime: Anticipate periods of low activity or diminished seasonal demand and plan maintenance activities during these times, coordinating across departments to ensure that planned downtime results in minimal operational disruption.
- Ongoing education and training: Ensure maintenance teams receive regular learnings based on emergent technology, regulatory changes, and industry best practices.
- Predictive maintenance techniques: Incorporate advanced monitoring techniques such as vibration analysis, thermography, and oil analysis to measure equipment performance and plan maintenance activities based on the resultant data.
- Continuous improvement: Conduct regular and annual reviews and adapt maintenance planning to changes in operational requirements, asset conditions, and technological advancements.
Preventive maintenance: annual benefits
The financial benefits of implementing preventive maintenance programs can be substantial. Savings can vary significantly from one type of operation or industry to the next. However, the following benefits will contribute directly to tangible reductions in operating expenses:
- Reduced downtime
- Extended equipment life
- Lower repair costs
- Improved energy efficiency
- Reduced exposure to non-compliance penalties
Taken together, these benefits can yield a truly meaningful impact on your organization’s bottom line. For instance, companies using Limble’s CMMS platform to support preventive maintenance software saw a 30% reduction in their average annual downtime. This translated into more than $134 million in annual savings.
Why is it important to review maintenance plans?
As the title implies, your annual preventive maintenance plan should be subjected to thorough review every year. It’s important to ensure that your maintenance plan is current according to regulatory standards, organizational goals, available resources, and the status of your physical assets.
Below, we take a closer look at some of the reasons it’s important to review your maintenance plans on an annual basis:
- Adaptation to changing conditions including operational shifts, technological advancements, and regulatory requirements
- Optimization of resources through analysis of maintenance data, identification of areas for improvement, and consequent reallocation of resources
- Compliance reviews ensuring that maintenance practices remain aligned with changes in laws, regulations, and safety standards
- Performance documentation using metrics like equipment downtime, response times, and overall equipment efficiency to gauge the effectiveness of your maintenance program
- Continuous improvement, adjusting the frequency of tasks, adopting new maintenance techniques, and retraining staff to optimize maintenance planning and execution
The role of CMMS in maintenance plan reviews
A growing number of organizations are finding greater implementation success with the support of powerful software-based planning solutions. For example, a CMMS platform can ease the transition into preventive maintenance programs and provide the tools for developing, tracking, and regularly reviewing your annual maintenance plan.
Here are some of the CMMS features that help simplify PM program management:
- Enhanced data analysis, tracking work orders, maintenance costs, time taken to complete tasks, and parts used to provide a comprehensive dataset for analysis
- Intuitive trend identification, spotlighting patterns in equipment performance that may indicate the need for new or different procedures
- Improved resource allocation, reviewing maintenance data to anticipate inventory needs, distribute labor, and forecast maintenance costs with greater accuracy
- Streamlined inventory management, providing real-time visibility into current inventory levels, automating reorder points, and ensuring that stock levels match the needs outlined in your maintenance plans
- Data-driven decision support, generating performance reports and measuring the effectiveness of maintenance activities against customized key performance indicators (KPIs)
These functions underscore the importance of having a reliable CMMS as you build, review, and refine your annual preventive maintenance plan. A CMMS not only facilitates the management of maintenance tasks. It also provides the practical and analytical tools to help you perform these tasks more effectively, efficiently, and affordably.
Learn more about how a CMMS platform can help your organization develop, execute and perfect your own annual maintenance program.
