What is preventive maintenance?

Preventive maintenance is a term that includes essentially any task associated with equipment upkeep. These tasks usually fall into at least one of the following categories:

Preventive-maintenance inspections take a close look at the machinery as a whole, checking areas and doing equipment tests to identify any issues that may need to be fixed. These problems can then be turned into work orders for a repair team to fulfill. Sometimes inspections will also include minor repairs, calibrations, or adjustments (called task-oriented preventive maintenance), to reduce the amount of repair work to be done later.

As the name suggests, mandatory tasks are those preventive maintenance responsibilities that must be performed at regular, predetermined intervals. These often include safety and compliance checks. Non-mandatory tasks are likewise important, but are more flexible in terms of scheduling; these responsibilities are generally less critical than mandatory maintenance, and thus may be delayed without risking penalties or equipment failure. When creating a preventive maintenance checklist, it may be effective to assign tasks as either mandatory or non-mandatory.

Occasionally, scheduled maintenance tasks will not be completed within an allotted time period. A pyramiding task is one that updates schedules to make note of the cancellation of a previous, unfulfilled preventive maintenance task, and reassigns the due date to coincide with the next scheduled maintenance. The updated task will include an explanation for the missed task, as well as notation on the original due date. A non-pyramiding task eliminates some of the documentation, canceling the missed date and rescheduling the task, without creating any explanatory notes.

Preventive maintenance may sometimes feel unnecessary and overly time consuming—after all, if it ain’t broke, why fix it? But the truth is that performing essential planned maintenance tasks offers a number of advantages beyond just peace of mind.

Ensure that small issues don’t become big ones; preventive maintenance identifies and corrects potential problems, and helps keep expensive hardware functioning for longer.

By pre scheduling small maintenance tasks, businesses can minimize equipment downtime. Preventive maintenance also allows organizations to schedule when equipment will be offline for maintenance, rather than having to respond immediately to unexpected and much-more time-consuming equipment failures.

Service level agreements (SLAs) define the level of service that should be expected from an equipment supplier. Preventive maintenance may be included in these contracts, and failure to perform the defined tasks may result in monetary or other penalties.

Regular maintenance gives businesses improved insight into machinery and how it’s being used. This may include the asset’s service history, and incorporate many important metrics.

When machinery goes unmaintained, more than just the equipment itself may be at risk. Faulty hardware can easily become a workplace hazard, potentially causing injury to operators or others. Preventive maintenance helps cut down on these dangers.

Standards help ensure that equipment is operating in-line with pre-established requirements of safety, environmental sustainability, and more. Regular preventive maintenance ensures that these standards are continually met, allowing businesses to make small adjustments or address major issues that may lead to noncompliance.

Well-maintained machines are much more likely to operate efficiently, providing more return on the investment. At the same time, reduced equipment downtime means improved productivity from employees who depend on functional hardware to perform their jobs.

Unmaintained machinery often becomes less energy efficient. Planned maintenance keeps equipment working at its best for longer, reducing energy use, and cutting down on the associated cost and environmental impact.

Whether associated with SLA or compliance breaches, decreased machine and employment productivity, or increased energy usage, equipment downtime has the potential to cost organizations large amounts of money. Preventive maintenance may reduce or eliminate many of these costs, resulting in an improved bottom line across the board.