Importance of Corrective, Predictive and Preventive Maintenance
The smooth running and success of a business depend on a lot of things including CMMS software and maintenance strategies as equipment failures are part of any company running cycle. Maintenance of all forms should be an integral part of the daily life of any business and neglect here can lead to a lot of loss in money as well as resources. There are different types of maintenance strategies.
Corrective, predictive and preventive maintenance combined together will give you the best maintenance plan for your business. How you combine them depends on the type and size of your business. In this article, we discuss the three maintenance strategies mentioned above, and when to use them. Before we get into that, let us see why maintenance is important to corporations.
Importance of maintenance
Competition is fierce in almost all of the business sectors and to be successful, companies have to be productive throughout their life. Defective or malfunctioning equipment can seriously hinder the productivity of a company which will affect its efficiency, success, customer satisfaction and security negatively, thus putting it at the bottom of the industry. Failure to take care of this will result in problems like
- Reduced company revenue
- The high cost of emergency repairs
- Loss in consumer confidence
- An increase in accidents at work
Corrective Maintenance
Corrective maintenance is the simplest of all maintenance strategies as it is aimed at repairing or replacing a failed equipment. If there is some equipment that has stopped working or if some fault is identified in it, it needs repair. Thus, corrective maintenance is considered an emergency procedure since it is put into action just after the break or malfunction of the item. The personnel responsible for maintenance have to aware of such failures to take quick action.
This strategy is perfect for equipment that is not crucial for the smooth running of business operations as downtime of such items will not affect the productivity of the business too much. It is also perfect for those items for which cost incurred for repair is less than that for prediction and prevention. There are two types of corrective maintenance strategies – unplanned and planned corrective maintenance.
Predictive Maintenance
Predictive maintenance is also known as planned maintenance and has a different sort of approach to the maintenance of equipment. Although we do not know in advance when a piece of equipment will fail, this technique is applied as soon as some fault is detected in it without waiting for the equipment to stop working completely.
Thus, in predictive maintenance, a lot of attention is needed from the responsible team since it is imperative to have direct and constant control and monitoring to be able to predict when there will be a need for maintenance procedures. Conditions are evaluated to determine whether an intervention will be necessary to avoid failures.
Preventive Maintenance
In preventive maintenance, strategies and methods are adopted to prevent the failure of equipment as opposed to corrective maintenance where an action is taken only after some failure occurs. This technique seeks to prevent breakdowns and malfunctions, consequently, the noncompliance with obligations assumed by the company. Time tracking methods and conditions are used to provide tools and equipment to keep up.
Conclusion
A good maintenance plan effectively combines corrective, predictive and preventive maintenance techniques for the maximum benefit of the company. Hope this article has helped you gain some understanding of the different techniques and when to use them.
