Preventive maintenance is the process of systematic inspection, detection, correction, and prevention of incipient failures, before they become actual or major failures.
Preventive maintenance (PM) is a schedule of planned maintenance actions aimed at the prevention of breakdowns and failures. The primary goal of preventive maintenance is to prevent the failure of equipment before it actually occurs.
Preventive maintenance offers the maintenance team an opportunity to service the equipment, lubricate bearings and other parts to reduce friction and allow the machine to work at optimum capacity. it also enables one to checkmate failures before they finally occur thereby preempting the possibility of downtime with its attendant cost of complete replacements, labor maximization etc.
The ANSI standards for Preventive Maintenance help you determine the type and frequency of inspections and maintenance procedures, define the minimum requirements for servicing and maintaining plant equipment, serve as a comprehensive maintenance checklist, and supplement more specific instructions, manufacturer publications, and other standards.
A good Preventive Maintenance Program is NOT a cost, but rather a very serious benefit. You will have less down time, hence much more up time (availability) for your equipment. Preventive maintenance activities include equipment checks, partial or complete overhauls at specified periods, oil changes, lubrication and so on. In addition, workers can record equipment deterioration so they know to replace or repair worn parts before they cause system failure.
The 'rule of thumb Vs cost for preventive maintenance is that the cost to the business for run to failure without doing predictive/preventive maintenance is three Times more than the cost to the business doing predictive/preventive maintenance.
If one has a CMMS system gather data and the statistical data will be right in front of you. If your preventive maintenance is not being done, one will see breakdowns and calls to be a lot more frequent. If the preventive maintenance is done and the calls and breakdowns persist, the frequency that the PM's are being done has to be looked into further. If that is changed and one still sees no change there may be additional frequency that needs to be made to the PM's. If this issue still persists there is a potential manpower training issue or equipment engineering issue.
A good Preventive Maintenance Program is NOT a cost, but rather a very serious benefit. You will have less down time, hence much more up time (availability) for your equipment.