Maintenance activities are essential for the proper functioning of any organization. There are three main types of maintenance activities: corrective, preventive, and default. Each type has its own purpose and benefits, and it is important to understand the differences between them in order to choose the best strategy for your organization. Corrective maintenance is used when something breaks and needs to be repaired.
It is the most common type of maintenance and is often used when an asset is too difficult or impossible to maintain. This type of maintenance is also used when an asset is cheap to carry in inventory, easy to replace, or not essential to operations. Preventive maintenance is a strategy that involves regular inspections and tasks in order to find and fix small problems before they become major issues. This type of maintenance helps spread costs by planning activities on a regular basis, and it can save money and frustration by allowing you to plan everything in advance.
Default maintenance follows the manufacturer's recommendations for maintenance, including when to perform inspections and maintenance. This type of maintenance is best used for assets that don't fit either of the other two descriptions. When choosing a maintenance strategy, it is important to consider all of your options, benefits, and drawbacks. For newer assets, default maintenance may be the best option.
As assets age and a maintenance and repair history is created, you can adjust the schedule to best suit your specific situation. Condition-based and predictive maintenance rely on sensors and special software to collect and analyze data from sensors installed directly on or near your assets. For conditions, the software looks for readings outside the preset parameters. For predictive purposes, the software analyzes the data to predict future failures long before they begin to develop.
Emergency maintenance should be avoided as much as possible as it tends to get a bad reputation. However, for certain asset classes and equipment, it may be the best option. Regardless of which strategy you choose, it is important to provide your maintenance teams with maintenance management software in order to ensure proper supervision of interventions and smooth communication between technicians and other professionals. A next-generation CMMS such as Mobility Work can help plants evolve towards predictive maintenance by offering a performance analysis tool capable of collecting all the data entered by the maintenance teams themselves.
