Breakdown Maintenance: Types, Benefits & Challenges

Breakdowns. In the maintenance world, it’s a term we’re all too familiar with. And, unfortunately, we all recognize the serious consequences that can come with a key part or piece of equipment failing. 

Downtime, injuries, costly repairs. All of these are commonplace when a breakdown inevitably occurs. And without a game plan for repairing your most vital infrastructure, overcoming a breakdown can be a days-, weeks- or even months-long affair that results in production delays, lawsuits and, in the worst scenarios, bankruptcies.

Fortunately, even if you opt for a reactive maintenance approach of only fixing equipment when it breaks rather than proactively performing routine maintenance, you can still have processes in place that highlight how to respond to breakdowns swiftly to minimize downtime and production delays.

In this guide, we’ll help you better understand what breakdown maintenance is, the various types of breakdown maintenance and some proactive ways that the right technology and processes can help streamline your maintenance processes. Let’s dive in!

What Is Breakdown Maintenance?

Breakdown maintenance is just what it sounds like — essentially any maintenance task performed on an asset that has broken down and needs to be fixed in order to be operational again. 

Suppose you’re the owner of a manufacturing plant that operates using a conveyor belt. Operations were running smoothly earlier today until, suddenly, the conveyor belt came to an abrupt halt due to a motor failure. Since you didn’t have a proactive maintenance plan in place, you’re forced to stop production completely to address the failure. You need to track down the replacement part and get a maintenance worker to repair the motor, deeming your entire factory inoperable. 

Downtime from broken equipment can last for hours or even days, costing you thousands, delaying project timelines and angering customers. As you can see, having a reactive maintenance approach versus a proactive one can have serious consequences. That said, there are plenty of situations in which waiting for breakdowns to perform maintenance instead of performing preventive maintenance may make more sense for your business. 

Types of Breakdown Maintenance

There are many types of breakdown maintenance, which vary completely depending on the type of machinery and operational issue that occurred. With that in mind, any broad ranging type of breakdown maintenance falls into one of two categories:

Planned Breakdown Maintenance

Equipment is intentionally allowed to run until it fails before any maintenance is performed. This technique is commonly applied to non-critical machinery or parts in which the cost of maintenance is less than the cost of preventive measures. 

The objective is to maximize the useful life of the asset, acknowledging that it is going to fail eventually, and then making a decision to either repair or replace it when failure occurs. Unlike most breakdown maintenance, this is considered planned maintenance because the failure is expected, allowing for maintenance workers to prepare by acquiring the proper equipment to repair it. 

Unplanned Breakdown Maintenance

Most breakdown maintenance is unplanned and is a reactive response to a failure that’s left a part or entire piece of machinery inoperable. In this instance, resources like maintenance workers need to be mobilized rapidly to acquire the necessary materials to address the issue.

Choosing a reactive approach to breakdowns can be costly when a failure occurs due to emergency maintenance that often comes with overtime pay for maintenance workers and expensive expedited shipping to get necessary parts fast. Overall, unplanned maintenance tends to be costlier and more detrimental than planned maintenance in the long-term, since unplanned issues are inevitably going to occur. 

Pro tip: If you’re wondering how long a recently broken down piece of equipment might take to repair, you can calculate its Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) by using this equation:

When Is Breakdown Maintenance Performed?

Breakdown maintenance is performed whenever a piece of equipment fails. Here are common circumstances:

Equipment That Can’t Be Repaired at All

Breakdown maintenance is performed when it is more efficient and economical to operate the machinery until it reaches complete failure. When failure occurs, the equipment is replaced entirely rather than repaired.

Equipment With Inexpensive or Replaceable Parts 

There is often equipment in which the cost of replacing and repairing parts is cheap, and there are minimal consequences of a part failure on overall operations. In this instance, part replacement can be more efficient than recurring preventive maintenance on the equipment. 

Hand Tools or Other Nonessential Assets

Since fixing or replacing hand tools or other non-essential assets like backup equipment or office supplies will not have a large impact on overall operations or production, they are fine to be repaired with a reactive approach whenever an item breaks.

Disposable Pieces of Equipment 

Disposable pieces of equipment are designed for single use and have a limited lifespan, meaning there is no sense in repairing them. Think of items like batteries, light bulbs and the like. This type of equipment is simply tossed and replaced when it breaks or ages. 

Breakdown Maintenance Pros & Cons

Like any type of maintenance, there are pluses and minuses to a reactive approach to fixing equipment after it fails.

Benefits of Breakdown Maintenance 

• Minimizes downtime when breakdown maintenance is planned for: Even though you’re waiting for a failure to occur before addressing issues, you can have a plan in place to maximize efficiency and get parts or equipment fixed quickly when a failure inevitably occurs. 
• Reduces maintenance costs on unnecessary preventive maintenance: Being too meticulous about preventive maintenance can result in unnecessary spending on maintenance workers and replacement parts. 
• Fewer staff required: You won’t need as many maintenance workers on site if you’re willing to just call maintenance teams in as needed if a failure does occur.
• No maintenance schedule needed: If you only plan to perform maintenance when a part or equipment fails, you don’t need to spend time and money with maintenance scheduling. Simply assign maintenance staff to projects as needed.

Disadvantages of Breakdown Maintenance 

• Can be wasteful (especially in manufacturing): Emergency repairs can be expensive as you have to halt production, pay maintenance workers and expedite the shipping of necessary parts. 
• Safety issues: A piece of equipment failing can often result in workers getting seriously hurt, leaving them unable to work and oftentimes prepared to sue for damages. 
• Bigger parts failures will cost more to replace: Proactive maintenance can allow maintenance workers to catch and address minor issues before they get worse. By avoiding this approach, you’re not catching these issues and waiting until they turn into more serious and pricey failures that also cause expensive downtime. 
• Source of issues can be more difficult to find: Since your maintenance workers aren’t regularly inspecting equipment, when a failure occurs, it can be difficult to pinpoint the exact part that led to the breakdown.

Breakdown Maintenance vs. Corrective Maintenance: What’s the Difference?

While both corrective and breakdown maintenance are reactive approaches to maintaining and repairing equipment, corrective maintenance can be performed on equipment that is still functioning, but not at its optimal levels, while breakdown maintenance involves equipment that is completely not working. 

Using a CMMS for Breakdown Maintenance

Any maintenance task can be simplified with a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software like Coast. 

Simplify your breakdown maintenance procedures with the following benefits of a CMMS:

• Schedule maintenance on the fly with a simplified digital work order app to notify employees. Or schedule routine maintenance on important equipment if you are looking to take a more proactive approach.
• Have technicians collect and record tangible data about breakdowns across assets and when they occur for a more refined, analytics-backed maintenance strategy.
• Track your inventory of vital parts and tools so that you have the equipment you need for repairs to drastically reduce downtime after a breakdown.