What is preventive maintenance (PM)? 

The act of performing regularly scheduled maintenance activities to help prevent unexpected failures, as preventive maintenance performed on physical assets to reduce the chances of equipment failure and unplanned machine downtime that can be very costly

·        A preventive maintenance schedule may include things such as cleaning, lubrication, oil changes, adjustments, repairs, inspecting and replacing parts, and partial or complete overhauls that are regularly scheduled.

What is the purpose of preventive maintenance?

·        Preventive maintenance keeps equipment and assets running efficiently, maintains a high safety level for your employees.

·        Organize and prioritize maintenance tasks so that a maintenance technician can create the equipment's best working condition and life span. By conducting regular preventive maintenance, ensure equipment continues to operate efficiently.

·        Fewer expensive repairs caused by unexpected equipment failure that must be fixed quickly.

·        Less unplanned downtime caused by equipment failure.

·        Less unnecessary maintenance and inspections.

·        Prolonged life of company equipment.

·        Fewer errors in day-to-day operations.

·        Improved reliability of equipment.

·        Reduced risk of injury.

 Types of preventive maintenance

There are 4 major types of preventive maintenance.
Each is built around the concept of planned maintenance, although they are all organized and scheduled differently, to suit different business operation purposes.

·        Usage-based preventive maintenance
Usage-based preventive maintenance is triggered by the actual utilization of an asset. This type of maintenance takes into account the average daily usage or exposure to environmental conditions of an investment and uses it to forecast a due date for a future inspection or maintenance task.

·        Calendar/time-based preventive maintenance
Calendar/time-based preventive maintenance occurs at a scheduled time, based on a calendar interval. The maintenance action is triggered when the due date approaches and necessary work orders have been created.

·        Predictive maintenance
Predictive maintenance is designed to schedule corrective maintenance actions before a failure occurs. The team must first determine the equipment's condition to estimate when maintenance should be performed. Then maintenance tasks are scheduled to prevent unexpected equipment failure.

·        Prescriptive maintenance
Prescriptive maintenance doesn’t just show that failure is going to happen and when, but also why it’s happening. This type of maintenance helps analyze and determine different options and potential outcomes, in order to mitigate any risk to the operation.

What’s the difference between preventive maintenance and predictive maintenance?

There’s often an impulse to regard preventive maintenance and predictive maintenance as completely distinct entities.
Unfortunately, this attempt to frame the relationship in simple terms of preventive maintenance vs predictive maintenance misses a key point.

In reality, predictive maintenance is a more evolved form of preventive maintenance. Both types try to proactively anticipate and prevent mechanical failures. But predictive maintenance takes the concept even further.

Consider a single piece of industrial equipment. If we were practicing preventive maintenance on that equipment, we might use general information about the make and model of the machine to formulate rough time estimates about when regular maintenance should be carried out on it. We would know approximately when maintenance should occur.

Predictive maintenance, on the other hand, is considerably more precise, and because of this, requires substantially more data. Information about the expected life cycle of that equipment model is combined with historical data about the performance of that particular unit. Once armed with that extra data, predictive maintenance models can churn powerful predictions that let operators know with certainty when system failures will occur. 

And because repairs scheduled through predictive maintenance occur exactly before they’re needed (and not according to a general timetable), no unnecessary repairs are made — which keeps maintenance budgets leaner. 

How to create a preventive maintenance plan?

·        Prioritize machine and equipment from criticality analysis

·        Collect historical data about the machine, considering machine age and depreciation - what types of failures each machine presented and frequency.

·        Maintenance data gathering about machines; machines Catalog or manual is the main source.

·        Verify and adjust data collected with the factory maintenance team.

·        Construct the maintenance plan with its tasks scheduling.

·        Construct a checklist for these tasks to audit and ensure the implementation of the tasks.

·        Delivery and implementation of the maintenance plan.