Preventive Maintenance

Maintenance strategies fall into three groups: reactive (fix after failure), preventive (intervene on a schedule) and predictive (intervene when condition data says so).

The hard part of preventive maintenance is setting the interval. Too frequent and you spend maintenance cost and downtime; too sparse and you miss failures. That is why real failure data such as MTBF is needed.

For it to take hold there must be a loop: work orders are raised and the results recorded. Checklists without recorded outcomes give you no basis for adjusting the interval.

• Register inspection items and intervals per asset and raise work orders automatically.
• Record what was done and which parts were replaced, feeding the next interval calculation.
• Adjust intervals using MTBF as evidence.

Preventive works on time or usage. Predictive works on condition data such as vibration or temperature. Predictive is more efficient but needs sensors and accumulated data, so most plants move to it from preventive rather than starting there.