What is Preventive Maintenance? 5 steps for preventive maintenance planning

In the current era of industrialization and modernization, preventive maintenance increasingly proves its essential role in ensuring the stable and efficient operation of systems and equipment. Not only does it help prevent sudden failures and minimize downtime, but preventive maintenance also contributes to extending the lifespan of equipment and reducing repair costs. Let’s explore what preventive maintenance is and the 5 steps to planning preventive maintenance with INTECH Service!

What is Preventive Maintenance?

Preventive Maintenance, also known as preventive maintenance, is a set of activities aimed at early detection and prevention of potential equipment failures before they occur, thereby ensuring continuous, efficient, and safe production operations. In other words, it is a proactive maintenance method that focuses on preventing failures rather than waiting for them to happen and then repairing them.

preventive maintenance 2

Benefits of Preventive Maintenance

advantages of preventive maintenance

Minimize Downtime:

Preventive maintenance helps identify and address potential issues before they cause failures, thereby reducing equipment and system downtime. This increases operational productivity, minimizing losses in output, revenue, and profit.

Save on Repair Costs

Repairing damaged equipment is often much more expensive than routine preventive maintenance. Preventive maintenance helps prevent serious failures, thus reducing and saving on repair, replacement, and labor costs.

Extend Equipment Lifespan

Preventive maintenance helps maintain equipment in good condition, thus extending its usable life. This helps businesses save on investment costs for new equipment and reduces the risk of obsolescence.

Improve Operational Efficiency

Well-maintained equipment operates more efficiently, consumes less energy, and produces higher-quality products. This helps businesses increase operational productivity, save on operating costs, and enhance competitive advantage.

Improve Workplace Safety

Well-maintained equipment is less likely to fail, thereby reducing the risk of workplace accidents and ensuring worker safety. This helps businesses create a safe working environment and enhance the company’s image.

Classification of Preventive Maintenance Methods

There are various ways to classify preventive maintenance methods, but the most common ones are based on the timing of execution and the methods used to predict or detect faults. Here are some of the main types:

types of preventive maintenance

Time-based Maintenance (TBM):

Time based maintenance

It involves performing maintenance activities on a predetermined schedule, regardless of the actual condition of the equipment.

Pros: Simple, easy to implement, predictable cost.

Cons: Can lead to resource wastage if maintenance is conducted too frequently or infrequently, not effective for equipment with uneven aging rates.

Condition-based Maintenance (CBM):

Condition based maintenance

Monitoring equipment condition using sensors and surveillance to determine when maintenance is needed.

Pros: More effective than TBM, reduces downtime and maintenance costs, extends equipment lifespan.

Cons: More complex to implement, requires higher initial investment, specialized expertise for sensor data analysis.

Failure Finding Maintenance (FFM):

Addressing faults and failures as they are detected during inspections or operation.

Pros: Simple, easy to implement, no need for high initial investment.

Cons: Ineffective for preventing failures, can lead to increased downtime and repair costs, reduces equipment lifespan.

Risk-based Maintenance (RBM):

Risk based maintenance 1

Prioritizes maintenance activities based on the risk level of equipment failure, focusing on the most critical or potentially consequential assets if they fail.

Pros: Efficient resource allocation, minimizes operational risks, maximizes Return on Investment (ROI) for maintenance activities.

Cons: Complex to implement, requires in-depth data analysis for risk assessment.

Performance-based Maintenance (PBM):

Performance based maintenance

Uses equipment performance data to determine when maintenance is needed.

Pros: Reduces downtime, maintenance costs, improves equipment performance, enhances transparency.

Cons: Can be costly to implement, requires expertise, may not be suitable for all equipment types.

Usage-based Maintenance (UBM):

Usage based Maintenance

Monitors equipment usage levels (operating hours, mileage) and triggers maintenance based on predetermined thresholds.

Pros: Simple, effective for equipment aging with usage, optimizes maintenance resources.

Cons: Requires a system for collecting usage data, may not be suitable for all equipment types.

Additionally, there are less common forms of preventive maintenance, such as:

Optimized Maintenance: Uses mathematical models to optimize maintenance schedules and minimize costs.

Reliability-based Maintenance (RBM): Focuses on maintaining the desired reliability level of equipment throughout its lifecycle.

5 steps for preventive maintenance planning

preventive maintenance 1

Step 1: Establish goals and priorities in preventive maintenance

The first step in creating a maintenance plan is to define goals. Maintenance strategies can have various objectives. Businesses may aim to save maintenance costs, minimize equipment failures, or extend the lifespan of expensive and hard-to-replace machinery and equipment.

Businesses also need to consider human resource allocation for preventive maintenance. In many cases, factories can collaborate with comprehensive operations and maintenance units to ensure professional, cost-effective preventive maintenance operations and streamline technical personnel.

Step 2: Equipment classification and inventory, establishing a list of maintenance tasks

Important considerations during equipment classification and inventory include:

Warranty terms

Equipment maintenance instructions

Data from previous inspections

Importance or value of assets

Step 3: Resource management for maintenance and implementation

In previous steps, long-term goals and ideal frequencies for preventive maintenance have been identified. In Step 3, we need to allocate long-term objectives into short-term goals and establish priority levels and difficulty levels for each goal.

In preventive maintenance, nearly all tasks are prioritized from level 1 to level 5. Businesses can consider and prioritize tasks accordingly.

Allocating personnel for maintenance is crucial because all resources need to be deployed promptly for unforeseen circumstances. If necessary, you can search for new suppliers to outsource services.

Are there any tasks you need to assign to an external provider so that internal technicians can prioritize other objectives? What maintenance categories do external maintenance contracts cover? What expertise should you look for in maintenance partners? Is communication and management with external suppliers effective?

Step 4: Establishing a KPI system for preventive maintenance plan

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) help monitor the progress and effectiveness of the preventive maintenance plan through specific metrics. Once preventive maintenance goals are set, it’s important to determine whether they are achieved or not. KPIs enable leaders to track the progress and efficiency of the maintenance plan. Some of the most common KPIs in preventive maintenance include:

Compliance rate with the preventive maintenance schedule

Equipment efficiency coefficient

Priority order of maintenance categories according to the schedule

Average time between equipment failures

Total maintenance costs (including labor, equipment, management costs, etc.)

Return on Investment (ROI) value on the investment

If your team consistently inputs data into maintenance software, the software can automatically calculate KPIs throughout the process. Learn more about this step in our article on measuring the effectiveness of your maintenance plan.

Step 5: Review and evaluation

A complex plan may not be fully completed from the initial draft, and there may be errors during implementation. In Step 5, it’s essential to continuously monitor and evaluate whether equipment failure risks still exist during maintenance. What improvements are needed for the maintenance plan? Have all activities met the requirements?

Are there any unnecessary categories in the plan? Are there any categories performing below expectations? What is the risk level of equipment failures for each asset? Are there any rapidly deteriorating devices requiring additional maintenance?

Above are the details about the concepts, benefits, classification of preventive maintenance methods, and steps in planning preventive maintenance. INTECH Service specializes in reliable and professional preventive maintenance services, backed by years of experience and a team of highly skilled experts and technicians in the field. If you have any questions or need advice, feel free to contact us today.