Preventive Maintenance Programs

This is the second in a series of post describing the various types of maintenance programs that are used for equipment, vehicles, and facilities. The second program is a preventive maintenance program.

Preventive maintenance can be defined as follows: Actions performed on a time- or machine-run-based schedule that detect, preclude, or mitigate degradation of a component or system with the aim of sustaining or extending its useful life through controlling degradation to an acceptable level. The U.S. Navy pioneered preventive maintenance as a means to increase the reliability of their vessels. By simply expending the necessary resources to conduct maintenance activities intended by the equipment designer, equipment life is extended and its reliability is increased.

In addition to an increase in reliability, dollars are saved over that of a program just using reactive maintenance. Studies indicate that this savings can amount to as much as 12% to 18% on the average. Depending on the facilities current maintenance practices, present equipment reliability, and facility downtime, there is little doubt that many facilities purely reliant on reactive maintenance could save much more than 18% by instituting a proper preventive maintenance program.

While preventive maintenance is not the optimum maintenance program, it does have several advantages over that of a purely reactive program. By performing the preventive maintenance as the equipment designer envisioned, we will extend the life of the equipment closer to design. This translates into dollar savings. Preventive maintenance (lubrication, filter change, etc.) will generally run the equipment more efficiently resulting in dollar savings.

While we will not prevent equipment catastrophic failures, we will decrease the number of failures. Minimizing failures translate into maintenance and capitol cost savings.

Advantages
• Cost effective in many capital-intensive processes.
• Flexibility allows for the adjustment of maintenance periodicity.
• Increased component life cycle.
• Energy savings.
• Reduced equipment or process failure.
• Estimated 12% to 18% cost savings over reactive maintenance program.

Disadvantages
• Catastrophic failures still likely to occur.
• Labor intensive.
• Includes performance of unneeded maintenance.
• Potential for incidental damage to components in conducting unneeded maintenance.

From Operations & Maintenance Best Practices - A Guide to Operational Efficiency July 2004