What is a Preventive Maintenance?

What is Preventive Maintenance?

Preventive Maintenance is the process of managing assets and equipment through regular inspections, service, and repairs on a proactive basis instead of a reactive approach. Rather than wait for a machine to breakdown (which can happen at odd times, thanks to Murphy's law) and then service it, Preventive Maintenance focuses on reducing failures before they even happen. This is achieved by taking up maintenance activities based on ....

• Time: Maintenance work is scheduled at regular calendar based intervals (daily, weekly, monthly, annual).

• Usage: Maintenance is automatically triggered after a certain amount of usage has happened (ex: hours of operation, kms/miles driven).

• Condition: Maintenance activities are triggered based on real-time data from IOT/SCADA systems.

Preventive Maintenance is widely used across industries, including manufacturing, oil and gas, healthcare, transportation, facilities/building management, hotels, etc., to ensure asset reliability and operational continuity.

Handling Preventive Maintenance with CMMS.

A Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) is a special software designed to streamline maintenance operations. A CMMS will involve few or all of the following ....

Scheduling and Planning

CMMS software allows maintenance managers to create detailed schedules for maintenance tasks. These schedules can be based on time, usage, or condition. To illustrate ....

• Monthly inspections of HVAC systems.

• Machine Lubrication after every 400 hours of operation.

• Sensor Calibration based on real-time performance data.

Automated Work Orders

A CMMS software automatically generates work orders based on time, usage or conditions and assigns them to the correct technician. Regular reminders (email, push notifications, text messages) ensure that every maintenance task is attended to.

Asset Tracking

A good CMMS software can maintain a complete database of all assets, sub-assets, and parts, including their maintenance history and warranty information. This ensures that every asset gets the care it needs, when it needs.

Condition Based Maintenance

Advanced CMMS platforms like SuperCMMS analyse data from IoT sensors and SCADA systems in real time to monitor equipment health. For example, vibration sensors can detect abnormalities in a machine and trigger a work order for preventive maintenance before a major failure occurs.

Resource Optimization

A critical part of preventive maintenance is to allocate resources (time, labor, tools, parts) efficiently. This also involves tracking inventory levels and ensuring that spare parts are available when needed. This helps in reducing downtime and minimizing costs.

Reporting and Analytics

Data drives everything. CMMS software can provide detailed reports on maintenance activities, like ....

• MTTR and MTBF reports

• Audit compliance for legal reporting.

• Bill of materials (BoM).

• Real time equipment uptime metrics.

These insights help in 'data-driven' decision making and continuous improvements.

Best Practices for Preventive Maintenance

Adopting some best practices and sticking to them no matter what can go a long way in your preventive maintenance efforts. Some suggested best practices are ....

Adopt a CMMS and train your team use it

Chose a CMMS depending on the complexity of your needs make sure your team gets trained to use it. Make sure all preventive maintenance work orders are generated through the CMMS.

Focus on critical assets

A few machines can bring down your entire operation for days or weeks. Identify these weak links and make sure all preventive maintenance activity required for these critical assets is documented in the CMMS. If anything goes wrong with any critical asset, all information required to bring it operational should be at the finger tips of maintenance technicians.

Leverage historical data

Data is valuable. Invest in IoT and SCADA systems that can collect data for you. Historical analysis can throw up interesting patterns. If you can identify patterns in historical data you can reasonably predict when your next failure will happen. For example, if a boiler frequently fails after 500 hours of operation, you can schedule a preventive maintenance activity after every 400 hours.

Train your Team

While getting CMMS software is easy, training your team and incentivizing them to use it everyday is crucial. Make sure that technicians are well trained on both the equipment and the CMMS software. Your machines are only as good as the team that takes care of them.

Always be adjusting

Industrial operations are a delicate dance between machines and people. The efficiency of machines decreases as years pass. What used to fail once every 500 hours can start to fail once every 300 hours. So always keep adjusting your preventive maintenance schedules. Continuous adjustment leads to continuous improvement.

Maintain accurate records

A CMMS helps you keep detailed records of all maintenance activities, inspections, repairs, and replacements. This information is comes in handy for audits, warranty claims, inventory management and future planning.

SuperCMMS makes preventive maintenance easy.

SuperCMMS is a 'Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS)' that brings together 'Asset Management', 'Work Order Management', and 'Inventory Management' in one seamless platform. It is available in the Cloud and can be accessed both on Web and Mobile (iPhone, Android).

SuperCMMS is free for 5 team members - forever and all features included. The paid version will save you a ton of money compared to ANY alternative on the market.

Give it a try. Your team, especially the field staff, will love you for it.

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