Preventive Maintenance Cuts Facility Operations Costs by Almost 20%

Facility managers are always looking for ways to save costs, and it looks like they finally found one. Recent reports highlight a 12 to 18 percent reduction in facility operations costs by performing preventive maintenance on equipment rather than being reactive and waiting until issues arise to perform maintenance.

So, how exactly does this play out? Suppose your manufacturing business operates in a warm climate that requires an HVAC system to keep the facility cool and functioning properly. Instead of being reactive and waiting until it breaks down to maintain your A/C units, you decide to be proactive, catching minor issues in recurring inspections ahead of summer before they turn into costly problems that would require you to perform expensive repairs and pause operations unexpectedly. Thanks to your preventive approach, your facility remains at a comfortable temperature, and operations can continue smoothly throughout the summer.

Read on to learn more about why and how to shift your facility maintenance program from a reactive to proactive maintenance approach.

Key Benefits of Preventive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance is a proactive approach to maintaining machines, equipment and facilities that involves performing routine maintenance and repairs based on a set schedule or usage intervals. It can have several benefits, including:

• Reducing unexpected equipment failures: By performing recurring inspections and scheduled maintenance tasks like lubrication, cleaning and replacement of worn down parts, you’re ensuring that facility-wide machinery is in optimal working condition and that wear and tear is limited. 
• Increasing asset lifespans: Keep equipment in optimal condition throughout its entire lifecycle. Unlike using a reactive maintenance approach, preventive maintenance involves scheduling inspections and routine maintenance tasks to mitigate wear and tear, replace faulty or misaligned parts and upkeep machinery to mitigate the effects of deterioration, keeping your equipment reliable and efficient for an extended period of time. In fact, research suggests preventive maintenance can extend asset lifespans by 20 to 40 percent!
• Controlling maintenance costs: A reactive maintenance strategy means that you’ll have unexpected repairs that require expensive part replacements and emergency technician labor. With preventive maintenance, you have a coordinated schedule for your maintenance technicians to perform inspections and routine tasks as well as replace parts, meaning you’ll have an exact breakdown of anticipated costs for the labor and maintenance. Even if technicians do catch a minor unexpected issue, it will be drastically cheaper to address before it turns into a serious problem that will require major repairs and downtime. 
• Decreasing safety risks: Preventive maintenance ensures that equipment is constantly inspected and that potential hazards are addressed before they pose a risk to employee safety.

How Shifting From Reactive to Proactive Maintenance Decreases Costs

We’ve already said that preventive maintenance can come with serious cost savings of almost 20 percent for your business compared to a reactive approach. Regular inspections and servicing help in avoiding emergency maintenance and unplanned downtime that commonly disrupt operations and increase technician labor costs.  

But you can take that proactive approach even further by implementing a predictive maintenance strategy that involves using condition-based monitoring tools to predict the best times to perform scheduled inspections and servicing.

According to the Department of Energy, a predictive maintenance approach can:

• Offer a 10 times return on investment
• Reduce maintenance costs by 25 to 30 percent
• Eliminate 70 to 75 percent of breakdowns
• Reduce downtime by 35 to 45 percent
• Increase production by 20 to 25 percent

By effectively implementing a predictive maintenance strategy, you can fix minor issues to save money on more major repairs while also maximizing efficiency and operational reliability to boost your bottom line and enhance productivity. 

Different Facility Costs to Consider

No matter which proactive approach you choose, understanding all the costs associated with maintaining your facility is essential for adopting an effective strategy. Here are the commonly associated costs with facility maintenance:

Labor Costs

Your facility needs maintenance technicians to inspect, service and repair your equipment. The expense of labor may include the standard salaries and overtime for in-house technicians as well as outsourced experts as needed. 

How preventive maintenance reduces labor costs: Choosing a reactive maintenance strategy means that your organization will be on the hook for expensive overtime for technicians to perform emergency repairs. With a preventive approach, you have full insight into how much you’re spending on scheduled inspections, repairs and maintenance. 

Equipment, Supplies & Tools

You need the appropriate tools and spare parts to maintain your equipment and keep it running smoothly. An essential aspect of a preventive maintenance strategy is proper asset and parts inventory management to ensure you always have the right supplies handy to perform inspections and routine maintenance. 

How preventive maintenance reduces supply costs: Since your maintenance tasks are planned well in advance, you can prepare to always have the necessary parts and tools in stock, so that you’re not caught ordering parts last-minute at a premium like you would be with a more reactive approach. 

Ongoing Maintenance

While a proactive approach to maintenance comes with more upfront costs for inspections, routine maintenance and system upgrades, preventive maintenance saves facilities money in the long-run by addressing small issues before they become more serious and by reducing unexpected downtime by over 35 percent on average.

How to Budget for Preventive Maintenance

To proactively maintain your facility, you’ll need to budget for routine inspections, maintenance and system upgrades. Start by considering the total cost of your reactive maintenance from the previous year; add up how much you spent on emergency repairs, technician labor, supplies and spare parts as well as the costs associated with unexpected downtime. This calculation provides a baseline for understanding the exact cost of unplanned maintenance at your facility.  

Next, consider the full value of each piece of equipment in your facility. Recognizing which machinery plays the largest role in your organization is essential for determining which preventive maintenance tasks need to be prioritized. The more valuable the equipment, the more consistently it should be inspected and maintained. Doing so will mitigate emergency breakdowns that will be especially expensive to repair and cause costly downtime. 

How Using a CMMS Can Help Improve Facility Maintenance Costs

In order to effectively implement your preventive maintenance strategy, you’re going to want to consider a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) like Coast to schedule facility-wide inspections and routine maintenance.

Incorporating this maintenance software into your operations can save on costs by:

• Increasing equipment uptime and lifespans: Scheduling timely inspections, part replacements and servicing will extend your equipment’s lifespan and reduce the amount of unexpected breakdowns by 70 to 75 percent on average. And with Coast’s comprehensive maintenance reporting, organizational leadership can leverage advanced predictive analytics to make informed decisions around how often to perform inspections and maintenance based on historical data.
• Enhancing preventive maintenance scheduling: You can handle all technician scheduling from a simple digital platform to ensure well-organized operations. Automate task assignments based on your equipment maintenance data and/or defined routine maintenance schedules. Once technicians are assigned a task, they’ll receive notifications reminding them about the assignment. Upon completion of the task, work orders are finalized and submitted via a mobile device that stores all information in the cloud.
• Improving team collaboration: With a CMMS, all maintenance information and workflows are centralized in one digital platform. Team members can communicate, provide status updates on tasks and complete work orders from the convenience of a tablet or phone. Once maintenance data is submitted, it is automatically integrated into maintenance reporting, so that organizational leaders can make more informed business decisions. 

Don’t wait to optimize your preventive maintenance workflows. Get started with Coast for free today!