What Is Preventive Maintenance? (Types, Examples & Benefits)

Nobody likes unexpected breakdowns or costly repairs, but it’s the stuff of nightmares for any property manager or business owner. Picture this: angry tenants yelling on the phone complaining about their malfunctioning HVAC system and then receiving an unexpected invoice for repairs totaling $15,000. This scenario is a stark reminder of what happens when you don’t have a preventive maintenance strategy in place. Without proactive maintenance measures to maintain your equipment, you’re left vulnerable to costly surprises, disgruntled customers and financial strain.

If you’re hoping to shift your maintenance strategy from reactive to proactive, read on to learn more about what preventive maintenance is, the advantages of this maintenance type and how to come up with a preventive maintenance plan to reduce future equipment failures.

What Is Preventive Maintenance?

Preventive maintenance is the proactive approach of regularly inspecting, servicing and maintaining equipment, machinery or facilities to prevent unexpected breakdowns and costly repairs. Instead of waiting for something to go wrong and reacting to it, preventive maintenance involves scheduling routine checks and regular maintenance activities like lubrication, adjustments and replacements to keep assets in optimal working condition.

Preventive maintenance is undeniably critical to any maintenance strategy. It’s key to lowering maintenance costs, reducing unplanned downtime, improving asset lifespan and efficiency, and increasing workplace safety. The goal of preventive maintenance is to prevent equipment failure before it occurs and to reduce the risk of accidents. Ultimately, taking certain precautions to ensure minimal risk to your business means that you can focus on improving what already works, instead of repairing what is broken.

Any type of maintenance that is not reactive (i.e., a response to a problem, malfunctioning equipment, technology) is preventive, and there are many different types of preventive maintenance that relate to different areas of a business or specific timing. 

Types of Preventive Maintenance

Time-based maintenance, usage-based maintenance, condition-based maintenance, predictive maintenance and prescriptive maintenance are all different preventive maintenance methods. Here’s how to differentiate each of them:

Time-Based Maintenance

Time-based maintenance, also known as interval-based maintenance, is a maintenance strategy in which maintenance tasks are scheduled based on predetermined time intervals. In this approach, critical equipment or machinery undergo maintenance activities at regular intervals regardless of the asset’s usage or condition. Examples of interval-based maintenance includes servicing the air conditioning every month during the summer, replenishing salt for soft water systems and cleaning vents to comply with health standards at least twice per year.

Preventive maintenance tasks (or PM tasks) are performed regularly to minimize the risk of unexpected failures and maintain equipment reliability and increase uptime. It can be helpful to create a monthly or annual maintenance schedule that complies with manufacturer recommendations for inspecting and cleaning equipment to keep you on track.

Usage-Based Maintenance

Usage-based maintenance is when maintenance tasks are carried out based on equipment usage. For instance, maintenance tasks are scheduled for a hydraulic system when fluid contamination levels reach a critical point. Whether it’s a vehicle oil change or an essential piece of machinery that has reached a certain number of hours, staying on top of proper care and maintenance will ensure long-lasting use of important equipment.

Condition-Based Maintenance

Condition-based maintenance involves condition monitoring of your most crucial assets to identify maintenance activities and needs. It relies on sensors to capture real-time information about equipment (such as temperature sensors or vibration sensors) for anomalies. For example, an infrared sensor could gather extreme temperature data from far away, showing that a piece of manufacturing equipment is operating above its standard temperature. This maintenance approach is different in that it’s not on a set schedule but more based on the condition metrics for a piece of equipment.

Predictive Maintenance

Predictive maintenance (PdM) is similar to condition-based monitoring, but it takes it a step further in that it uses a combination of condition monitoring and machine learning algorithms that use historical data to predict possible defects that could result in a system crash. PdM is especially relevant for manufacturing, food production plants, power and energy industries in which the information gleaned from predictive maintenance can help automate work orders and even allow for maintenance managers to predict when system downtimes may occur based on previous patterns. This way they can schedule maintenance tasks to reduce crashes on critical operational equipment.

Prescriptive Maintenance

Taking it yet another step further than PdM, prescriptive maintenance uses advanced analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence to generate predictions about maintenance, and to also act on them. Prescriptive maintenance makes recommendations to improve system operations and also follows up on its own to produce a work order and oversee the entire process.

Sound advanced? That’s because it probably is for most businesses. As long as you’re manually checking your essential equipment and staying on top of manufacturer recommendations and inspection procedures, you’re already well on your way to effective preventive maintenance.

Benefits of Preventive Maintenance

One of the most obvious benefits of implementing a PM program is that you’re pre-empting issues before they occur. Here are some other benefits:

• Reduces business disruptions and less closures: Minimizing unexpected equipment failures reduces the likelihood of business disruptions and closures by ensuring that machinery operates smoothly and reliably.
• Increases asset’s lifecycle: When you regularly service your machinery, you increase the equipment lifespan, bringing you great cost savings in that you won’t need to replace equipment as often.
• Controls labor costs: Carrying out regular maintenance reduces the risk of after-hour breakdowns. Maintenance technicians will work only during scheduled hours, eliminating unexpected labor costs that come with emergency maintenance callouts.
• Eliminates potential safety risks: When you proactively identify and address equipment issues promptly, such as an equipment in failure mode, there’s a lower chance of issues escalating into hazards, which eliminates any potential safety risks.

Disadvantages of Preventive Maintenance

You might be wondering: How could there possibly be a downside to staying prepared? But there are a few drawbacks to regular preventive maintenance, such as:

• Time-consuming: It can take a lot of time to carry out inspections across all your assets, especially if you have a lot of assets. It’s worth noting, however, that with a proper PM plan, you can space out your inspections.
• Costs more: Let’s face it, there’s more planning, preparation and upfront costs involved when you’re trying to make sure your assets do not run to failure.
• Overdoing it: “Over maintenance” is a real thing. It occurs when you excessively maintain your assets under the impression that you’re preventing breakdowns, whereas you’re accidentally causing them instead.

How to Avoid Too Much Preventive Maintenance

You can avoid over maintenance by creating a preventive maintenance program. This program should include your preventive maintenance schedule that will ensure your planned maintenance is conducted at the right intervals, which will minimize the risk of over maintenance.

Always carefully consider whether a preventive action really needs to be performed. A good rule of thumb is: If you go past the optimum point of repairs and inspections on a particular piece of equipment, you’re doing too much preventive maintenance and wasting money. Only take preventive maintenance actions when the benefits of doing so will outweigh the risks and costs.

How Much Does Preventive Maintenance Cost to Implement?

The cost boils down to labor costs (for large facilities management and maintenance teams) and, ultimately, to the number of machines and utilities you need improved or protected.

It’s important not to exceed your maintenance budget. Do what you can, where you can, to avoid future damages to your business caused by preventable accidents. This can be as simple and as budget-friendly as manually cleaning a ventilation system, increasing lubrication frequency on equipment or spending one hour training staff to operate certain machinery safely and effectively.

To determine how much of your budget should be allocated to preventive maintenance, you should:

1. Add up the total cost of your reactive maintenance for the past year
2. Consider the value of all your equipment

This will give you a good idea of how much you can potentially save in the way of reactive maintenance, in addition to the savings you’ll enjoy from extending the life of your equipment.

3 Steps to Creating a Preventive Maintenance Plan

As you decide which areas of your business and equipment to target for preventive maintenance, you’ll go through a few steps before the process is completed.

Step 1: Designate Your Goals

The first thing you’ll need to do is designate your goals for preventive maintenance. For example, if you want to prioritize a particular machine, your goal could be to experience zero lost time due to repairs on that machine over the next year. Be sure to specify these maintenance goals, so your entire staff can be on the same page and support the goal in whatever way they can.

Step 2: Schedule Maintenance

Next, you’ll need to plan and schedule your maintenance, which will involve selecting the most convenient day for the repairs, upgrades, etc. Pick a day or time that is least likely to interfere with your business’ productivity.

Step 3: Evaluate & Educate

Finally, if any of the preventive maintenance performed results in new processes or important information, train your staff to manage equipment and handle all machinery or technology effectively and safely. Taking the time to educate your staff will result in higher productivity and increased efficiency for your business.

These three steps establish a baseline for your preventive maintenance plan. If reactive maintenance is still occurring at a high frequency, despite the fact that you’re investing in preventive maintenance, you’ll need to increase the amount of your preventive maintenance. Re-evaluate your process after a set time to see if you’ll need to increase or decrease preventive maintenance, or maintain the same level.

One other note: There are some functions you’ll perform for and around your business that should not be classified as preventive maintenance but are rather defined as corrective maintenance, including changing a light bulb, repairing a delivery vehicle or a speaker system, etc. Once some form of machine failure has already occurred, the action taken is no longer preventive.

How to Create a Preventive Maintenance Checklist

Creating a preventive maintenance checklist is part of the planning process, and it’s a good way to ensure you’re not focusing on too many items at one time (and risk spending more than you can afford).

A comprehensive checklist will help you remain on task and will simplify the preventive maintenance process. Rather than trying to retain a vague idea of what might need attention around your business, referencing a solid checklist will help you reach all of your preventive maintenance goals.

To create an effective preventive maintenance checklist, start by listing all of the assets around your business that could benefit from regular inspection. Next, gather original equipment manufacturer (OEM) manuals — if not all of them, then at least the manuals you have on hand that pertain to your assets and equipment. Finally, review the history of your assets. Have certain pieces of machinery had breakdowns in the past? Are you using non-original spare parts that might affect the machine’s utility (i.e., parts that have been ordered separately from the manufacturer)?

If there are any unique considerations for a piece of equipment, your preventive maintenance plan should include steps that acknowledge those characteristics, in addition to what’s outlined in the OEM manual.

Examples of Preventive Maintenance

Let’s briefly touch on a few specific examples of preventive maintenance that may be applicable to your business:

• Check your HVAC system: Your heating, ventilating and cooling system is integral to the success of your business. If your A/C goes bust at the height of summer, for instance, you can expect fewer customers and a negative impact on business. Routinely inspect your HVAC system (preferably seasonably) to avoid costly repairs in the event of future damage.
• Check critical assets: Your business’ main assets include the regularly used equipment that contributes to your overall success. For example, if you own a restaurant, a walk-in refrigerator is going to be one of your essential assets — your business can’t function without it. For regular refrigerator maintenance, it’s important to check door seals, defrost built-up ice, check the drip pan and drain hole, and clean the condenser coils every so often. You should consider performing these tasks once per month when it comes to maintaining the optimum functionality of your most critical assets.
• Inspect all essential business vehicles: Be sure to have essential business vehicles inspected as frequently as recommended by the manufacturer. Failure to perform routine maintenance could result in breakdowns, engine failure and dangerous driving conditions. If possible, set up service reminders via an app, or check your mileage to stay on top of vehicle inspections. This type of basic preventive maintenance will ensure that your vehicles perform optimally for your business’ success.
• Complete property maintenance for communities: For properties such as senior living communities or apartment complexes, it’s important to perform routine inspections to keep tenants safe and preserve the health and value of the property. Water damage, for instance, can be detrimental to community living, but it’s easily preventable with routine inspections and maintenance. Some examples of property maintenance include regularly checking roofs and gutters, bathroom plumbing and appliances.

Preventive maintenance can be as complicated or as simple as you make it. Remember to keep in mind that you should only focus on a handful of preventive maintenance actions at a time to keep the process manageable and affordable, and the little precautions you’re taking now will contribute to a safer, more successful business in the long run.

How Can Preventive Maintenance Software Help?

Historically, maintenance teams record and track PMs using either pen and paper or spreadsheets, both of which are very manual and time-consuming and don’t always lead to an accurate analysis. Preventive maintenance software (sometimes referred to as computerized maintenance management system software or CMMS software) provide a great solution for efficiently creating and scheduling work orders digitally for preventive maintenance. These helpful programs greatly reduce the time you’d otherwise spend tracking systems manually. Furthermore, many software providers are quite affordable and keep all your maintenance history in one place.

Using preventive maintenance software enables you to organize your asset management system. You can create and submit digital work order forms in one streamlined system that also allows you to modify completed or in-process repairs and maintenance. Technicians can easily access all of the preventive maintenance work orders they need to perform, and the software will automatically send alerts and reminders about when the next inspection is due. Moreover, you’ll also have the ability to track work orders from start to finish. You’ll even receive access to data and trends that show equipment downtime, repair costs and even causes of issues.

Sound to good to be true? Create your first preventive maintenance task for free using Coast.