Preventive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance involves repairing or replacing assets before issues arise to maximize their performance and extend their life cycles.

(Free Guide) Switch from Reactive to Preventive Maintenance

What is Preventive Maintenance?

Preventive maintenance (PM) is an approach to asset management that involves performing repairs and other maintenance work proactively to minimize wear and tear, enhance performance, and avoid unexpected breakdowns. Common examples of preventive maintenance tasks include cleaning, inspections, and lubrication

Two types of preventive maintenance strategies

Without a breakdown or malfunction to alert them, how do maintenance technicians know when to conduct preventive maintenance? Different types of preventive maintenance have different types of triggers to guide maintenance teams. Most organizations use a combination of 

Time-based maintenance 

With time-based preventive maintenance plans, tasks occur based on a pre-established calendar. Regardless of the asset’s condition, technicians service them once a specific amount of time has passed. 

Some examples of time-based preventive maintenance include: 

  • Changing a vehicle’s oil every three months
  • Checking pump lubrication every other week
  • Visually inspecting conveyor belts once a month

The key with time-based maintenance is finding the right balance. Perform maintenance too often and you may wind up wasting time on healthy assets. Neglect regular inspections, and those assets won’t stay healthy for long. You’ll likely contend with unexpected equipment failures

Manufacturer recommendations provide a good starting point for establishing an effective preventive maintenance schedule. Introducing preventive maintenance software in the form of a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) can make it even easier to find the right balance with real-time performance data. Learn more about CMMS software and all the ways it can automate and optimize your PM program in our essential guide

The Essential Guide to CMMS

Download this helpful guide to everything a CMMS has to offer.

Usage-based maintenance

Also called meter-based runtime, usage-based maintenance sees organizations plan and schedule routine maintenance activities around production cycles and operating hours. Maintenance procedures take place regardless of the asset’s condition or the amount of time that has passed. 

Here are a few examples of the ways usage-based can help avoid unplanned downtime and disruptions

  • Changing a vehicle’s oil after every 1,000 miles
  • Servicing a piece of equipment after 500 operating hours
  • Performing maintenance on a system every 100 production cycles

The preventive maintenance workflow

Here’s a look at the typical preventive maintenance process

  1. The asset hits its established time- or usage-based threshold 
  2. Authorized personnel create and assign a work order
  3. Technicians perform PM tasks according to the process outline in the work order
  4. Once the asset is up and running, the technician closes the work order
  5. The process starts all over again

preventive maintenance workflow

A simple, streamlined workflow for preventive maintenance work.

More advanced types of preventive maintenance

The term preventive maintenance describes an entire category of maintenance strategies. More advanced approaches to preventive maintenance tasks involve solutions for condition monitoring to help account for the differences between various types of assets and their degradation over time.  

Predictive maintenance (PdM)

Predictive maintenance is an advanced type of condition-based preventive maintenance. OEM recommendations and data from sources like maintenance logs contribute to algorithms that can predict the likelihood of equipment failures. When you know when an asset is expected to fail, you can plan corrective maintenance well in advance. 

Prescriptive maintenance (RxM)

The most advanced type of preventive maintenance, prescriptive maintenance, tells you when a piece of equipment will fail while offering recommendations to help prevent the failure. 

The benefits of preventive maintenance

Taking a preventive approach to equipment maintenance may entail some up-front expenses, but the investment tends to pay off. Here are some potential benefits to highlight if you’re making the case for a switch from reactive to preventive maintenance

Extended asset lifespans

Unexpected breakdowns can cause significant damage to your equipment. A good PM program prevents breakdowns, minimizing wear and tear to extend the lifespan of your equipment

Boosted productivity and uptime

Identifying signs of trouble early can make a big difference in reducing the frequency, length, and impact of equipment downtime. With less downtime, you’ll better allocate maintenance resources and see the benefits of a more productive, engaged team. A culture of proactivity will have an impact across the full organization, contributing to continuous improvement. 

Cost reduction

Taking a preventive approach to asset management helps you drive down a range of maintenance costs. When you perform a lot of unplanned maintenance tasks, you use a lot of spare parts. This requires you to keep an extensive spare parts inventory on hand or spend big on emergency shipments. With a plan in place to schedule maintenance proactively, you’ll have a better sense of which parts you’ll need and when. This means lower spare parts inventory spend and fewer costly repairs overall. You’ll save on labor too thanks to reduced overtime. 

In 2023, Limble customers cut their overtime spend by nearly $800 million. That’s in addition to more than $55 million in savings on parts.   

Reduced energy consumption

More proactive maintenance for critical equipment could help you deliver on sustainability goals. When you keep assets in peak condition, they require less energy to operate. Some estimates suggest that proactively maintaining HVAC systems can lower energy usage by as much as 20%

Improved compliance and safety

Some industries are subject to safety regulations that mandate regular maintenance. Plans and schedules for maintenance tasks make it simpler to stay on top of requirements and avoid lawsuits or fines.

Preventive maintenance vs. reactive maintenance

The alternative to preventive maintenance is reactive maintenance. When organizations opt for a reactive approach, they wait until machinery malfunctions or breaks down to complete maintenance tasks. 

Reactive maintenance doesn’t require any up-front investment or careful planning. Though they’ll save early on, reactive maintenance departments typically see higher long-term maintenance costs.  

What is the right type of maintenance for your assets? 

The best approach to maintenance involves a mix of different strategies. Here’s how you can tailor your approach to the criticality of individual assets. 

  • Run-to-failure or reactive maintenance may be the most cost-effective choice for low-priority, non-repairable, and soon-to-be-replaced assets.
  • Preventive maintenance is often the right choice for medium- to high-priority assets.
  • Predictive and prescriptive maintenance bring higher up-front costs, but they may prove cost effective for highly critical assets that are costly to repair or replace.

Metrics and KPIs for your preventive maintenance program

If you want your maintenance program to prove successful in the long term, you’ll need to establish key performance indicators, set goals, track the right metrics, and commit to using data analysis for strategic improvements. Here are a few metrics that can offer insights into your maintenance team’s performance and the success of your PM program

Downtime reduction

One of the primary goals of preventive maintenance is to reduce unplanned downtime. Look at downtime data from before you implemented your program for a better sense of how a proactive approach has improved operations. 

Planned Maintenance Percentage (PMP) 

Calculating Planned Maintenance Percentage (PMP) provides a side-by-side comparison of scheduled maintenance and unplanned maintenance. High PMP means your team is working at peak efficiency and keeping downtime low. Low PMP means you’re spending too much time responding to emergencies. 

You can calculate PMP by diving your total number of planned maintenance hours by your total maintenance hours overall.  

Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) 

MTBF is an essential metric for understanding the reliability of your assets and the effectiveness of your preventive maintenance program. Low-MTBF assets are especially reliable, while high-MTBF assets are prone to unexpected failures. 

Work order completion rate

Completing work orders on time is essential for keeping your maintenance program running efficiently. You can calculate work order completion rate by dividing the work orders your team completed on time by the total number of work orders issued across a given period. 

Schedule compliance 

Calculating schedule compliance is another way to assess the effectiveness of your maintenance program. Like work order completion rate, it compares work completed on time to the total work scheduled over a specific period of time. 

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Preventive maintenance checklist: download it today

Does your maintenance department have everything it needs to take a proactive approach to asset management. Download our free preventive maintenance checklist to assess your capabilities, identify gaps, and build a more effective team. 

Checklist for Creating a Preventive Maintenance Plan

Following a consistent Preventive Maintenance Plan can make life easier. Use this checklist to create your own!

FAQ

What do the best preventive maintenance software have in common?

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