Preventive maintenance work is a core component of asset management strategies in any industry. But your maintenance program is especially important if you operate in an asset-heavy industry like manufacturing, healthcare, energy, or logistics. These industries rely on valuable physical assets like manufacturing equipment, warehouse machinery, fleet vehicles, industrial facilities, and infrastructure for operational continuity.
The consistency, quality, and efficiency of your operations depend on the availability, reliability, and optimal functionality of your physical assets. This means you depend on your maintenance team to keep your equipment working, your facilities safe, and your operation running smoothly.
Why are preventive maintenance procedures important?
Preventive maintenance procedures like routine inspections, seasonal equipment servicing, and regularly scheduled replacement of aging parts can dramatically improve the performance of your maintenance program.
Organizations that adopt a proactive approach to maintenance routinely experience benefits like lower repair costs, reduced downtime, and extended equipment lifespan. In the discussion that follows, we’ll explore both the importance of building a preventive maintenance program and supporting this program with proven preventive maintenance procedures.
Common preventive maintenance procedures
Maintenance teams across most industries can anticipate performing routine servicing procedures like periodic equipment calibration, regularly scheduled lubrication, and upkeep of facilities systems like HVAC systems, electrical systems, and plumbing systems.
However, it is also true that preventive maintenance procedures may vary by industry. Factors like regulatory conditions, the types of equipment under management, and the criticality of certain assets can shape the preventive maintenance process and procedures at the top of your priority list. For instance:
- Manufacturing firms must have standard operating procedures in place for:
- Changing lubrication oils in machinery to reduce friction, prevent overheating, and discourage equipment downtime.
- Calibrating machines correctly and ensuring they produce quality, consistent goods.
- Transportation firms must have standard operating procedures in place for:
- Checking tire pressure, tread depth, and rotating tires to ensure safety and improve fuel efficiency.
- Inspecting brake components, including pads and fluid levels, to ensure vehicle safety and performance.
- Energy production businesses must have procedures in place for:
- Inspecting generators, including fuel and oil levels, to ensure reliable operation and to safeguard energy supply.
- Cleaning solar panels to optimize energy production and prolong system life.
- Healthcare facilities must have standard operating procedures in place for:
- Calibrating medical devices, such as MRI machines and infusion pumps to ensure accurate diagnostics, reduce the risk of equipment failure, and enhance patient care.
- Sterilizing equipment to ensure infection control, patient safety, and compliance with health regulations.
Regardless of industry, codifying certain common preventive maintenance procedures can offer an array of benefits including:
- Reduced downtime and disruption
- Streamlines workflows
- Fewer costly repairs
- Enhanced safety and compliance
- Improved efficiency
- Enhanced productivity
- Extended asset lifecycles
- Higher quality output
- Improvements to key metrics like Mean Time to Repair and Mean Time Between Failures
Different types of preventive maintenance procedures
Preventive maintenance (PM) procedures may fall into a few different categories. These categories are typically dictated by the methods used to trigger proactive maintenance activities. For instance:
- Scheduled maintenance or time-based maintenance typically involves routine inspections and servicing performed at pre-determined intervals (i.e. monthly, seasonally, annually, etc.) to prevent equipment failure. Examples of scheduled preventive maintenance may include oil changes for production machinery and filter replacements for HVAC systems. These are procedures that are usually carried out at on schedule regardless of the actual condition of the equipment itself.
- Usage-based maintenance typically involves maintenance activities that are triggered by usage indicators such as units produced, production cycles completed, hours of operation, or miles driven. Examples of usage-based maintenance procedures include replacing belts and hoses on fleet vehicles at predetermined mileage thresholds or recalibrating manufacturing equipment after a preset number of production cycles.
- Predictive maintenance is a form of proactive maintenance that sees maintenance technicians use real-time monitoring tools and historical maintenance data in to more accurately forecast when equipment is likely to fail and intervene accordingly. Examples of predictive maintenance procedures may include monitoring vibrations in rotating equipment to identify imbalances or misalignments before they lead to failures or using thermal imaging to detect hotspots in electrical systems that may indicate overheating components.
- Condition-based maintenance refers to maintenance procedures that are triggered based on indicators related to your asset’s real-time condition. Examples of condition monitoring procedures may include analyzing lubrication oils for contaminants and degradation to determine exactly when an oil change is necessary and regularly checking fluid levels in hydraulic systems or cooling systems to ensure that they operate at optimal levels.
Benefits of preventive maintenance procedures
Codifying preventive maintenance (PM) procedures offers several advantages, especially when compared to reactive maintenance.
Teams that rely too heavily on reactive maintenance procedures face many operational risks including:
- Higher repair costs, with more frequent and unexpected breakdowns leading to increased maintenance costs, costly expedited parts delivery, staff overtime, and premature replacement of costly assets.
- Increased downtime, with emergency repairs often taking longer to complete than preventative tasks.
- Safety risks, with the run-to-failure strategy contributing to more likely equipment malfunction and, consequently, a heightened risk of accidents, injuries, and even fatalities.
- Reduced equipment lifespan, with the lag-time in addressing maintenance issues leading to cumulative problems.
- Misallocation of resources, as time, materials, personnel, and capital are diverted to address crises rather than focusing on proactive improvements.
These risks are sharply contrasted by the opportunities that come with the transition to a preventive maintenance model. For instance, adopting preventive maintenance procedures can lead to:
- Reduced unplanned downtime, with preemptive maintenance actions helping to preempt the occurrence and frequency of equipment breakdowns.
- Significant cost savings, with early maintenance intervention helping to offset the high costs associated with emergency repairs or part replacements.
- Improved efficiency, with equipment operating more optimally, reducing energy consumption costs, and ultimately offering a longer useful lifespan.
- Improved safety, with regular maintenance helping to identify and rectify operational safety hazards before they can escalate into accident or injury, and consequent fines or legal liability.
- Longer equipment lifespan, with regular inspections and timely repairs helping to mitigate wear and tear, maximize return on investment, and reduce the frequency of capital expenditures on new equipment.
Implementing preventive maintenance procedures
Transitioning to a preventive maintenance (PM) program requires careful planning and execution. Below is a practical and actionable step-by-step guide for how to implement a preventive maintenance program in your organization:
- Assess your current maintenance practices by inventorying existing assets, identifying critical equipment, evaluating your current maintenance procedures, and identifying gaps in your maintenance program.
- Establish clear goals, defining exactly what your organization aims to achieve with the PM program, such as reducing downtime, lowering maintenance costs, improving fuel efficiency, or improving safety.
- Develop a preventive maintenance plan that includes scheduling for routine maintenance, inspections, and servicing, as well as standard operating procedures (SOPs) for vital tasks like lubrication, calibration, cleaning, and more.
- Implement a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) to streamline scheduling, tracking, and documentation of maintenance activities.
- Provide training on the importance of preventive maintenance, the new PM procedures, the use of any software or tools, and more broadly, the adoption of a proactive maintenance mindset.
- Implement a pilot PM program on a select group of critical assets to test the effectiveness of your new procedures and tools, monitor your outcomes, and adjust strategies as needed before implementing your PM program organization-wide.
- Create maintenance records and an audit trail, documenting all PM activities, including completed tasks, inspections, and any issues encountered.
- Engage in continuous improvement by staying informed of industry best practices, providing ongoing training to personnel, conducting systematic reviews of your maintenance program, and implementing constructive change where appropriate.
Streamline every preventive maintenance procedure
A CMMS is a powerful preventive maintenance software that can simplify and optimize your preventive maintenance (PM) program. The top maintenance management solutions include a wide range of integrated and automated functions that help make the transition from a predominantly reactive maintenance strategy to a preventive maintenance program.
In particular, a leading-edge CMMS can streamline your preventive maintenance procedures with advanced features like:
- Centralized asset management and real-time asset tracking
- Automated scheduling based on preventive maintenance time intervals, usage metrics, or predictive real-time data
- Streamlined work order creation for preventive maintenance tasks, allowing users to quickly assign responsibilities and prioritize work
- Automated alerts and reminders for upcoming PM tasks
- Centralized record-keeping on all maintenance activities, including inspections, repairs, and service histories
- Data analysis and insights on equipment performance, maintenance trends, and patterns that might be used to predict potential failures
- Automated inventory tracking of spare parts, tools, raw materials, and other supplies needed for maintenance tasks
- Enhanced cross-functional communication and collaboration using a centralized dashboard
- Mobile accessibility, allowing maintenance personnel to access information, complete work orders, and communicate across departments both from the field and remotely
- User-friendly dashboards, providing maintenance teams with easy access to key metrics, a preventive maintenance schedule, timely notifications and alerts, customizable views of work orders, compliance checklists, and more
Check out our CMMS Buyer’s Guide to find out how a CMMS solution can help your organization streamline and refine its preventive maintenance procedures.
