Planned Preventative Maintenance

Benefits and application of time-based maintenance

Planning is the biggest advantage of any preventive maintenance, compared to nonexistant planning with reactive maintenance. Reactive maintenance has many overhead costs that can be avoided during the planning process. The costs of unplanned maintenance include those of lost production, downtimes, higher costs for parts, and time lost in responding.

Market benchmarks indicate that unplanned maintenance typically costs three to five times more than when initially planned. However, when maintenance is planned, equipment can be shut down outside production hours to minimize business impacts, and any required parts and staff can be gathered prior to the shutdown to minimize the work execution time. In addition to cost reduction, business continuity is also improved with planned preventive maintenance, as assets break down less often.

Compared to condition monitored maintenance, time-based maintenance does not require a specific monitoring strategy, eliminating the need to interpret the actual condition data and act accordingly. However, as previously stated, maintenance may occur either too often or not often enough with a time-based strategy.

Suitable assets for time-based preventive maintenance include those that have a critical operational function, have preventable failure modes, and that have an increasing likelihood of failure over time.

Benefits and application of condition monitored maintenance

Condition monitored maintenance, also known as predictive maintenance, aims to predict when asset failure might occur and when maintenance is needed. The goal is to prevent failure by performing the required maintenance just-in-time. Ideally, condition monitored maintenance would allow maintenance frequency to be as low as possible, preventing unplanned reactive maintenance and reducing costs associated with premature time-based maintenance.

Condition monitoring can be done using several techniques, but requires that assets can communicate their actual status in real-time with your maintenance management system. Example of statuses are temperature, operating time, energy consumption, production counts, error codes, or anything that indicates malfunction or can call out the need for maintenance. Choosing the correct technique for condition monitoring is important and should be done in consultation with equipment manufacturers and maintenance experts.

Suitable assets for condition monitored maintenance include those that have a business-critical operational function, have failure modes that can predicted with real-time monitoring, and that have a likelihood of failure that is not only dependent on time.

PPM and maintenance management software

Planned preventive maintenance (PPM) is more complex to implement than reactive maintenance because it requires that the maintenance schedules are known upfront and that activities are planned and executed in time. Condition monitored maintenance is even more complex than time-based maintenance as it necessitates a monitoring strategy and real-time connection of associated assets.

In either case, a maintenance management software solution like IWMS, CAFM or CMMS is a necessity. When maintenance is planned and tracked by using paper or Excel, it is impossible to evaluate maintenance scenarios, plan activities and budgets, or manage costs of execution. Maintenance management software helps managers in properly monitor the quality, costs and compliance involved in maintenance. Maintenance staff and field engineers have real-time access to their work orders, documentation and schedules; no work orders are lost, work is better scheduled, executed faster, and done in a safer and more compliant manner.

Compared to Computerized Maintenance Management Software (CMMS), Integrated Workplace Management Systems (IWMS) maintenance management software is an integrated part of a complete suite of real estate and facility management processes. This integration allows organizations to connect preventive maintenance with other processes in sustainability management (energy monitoring, LEED or Breeam assessments), space and workplace management (utilizations, occupancies), services management (outsourcing, maintenance contracting) and real estate management (portfolio analyses, benchmarking).