Preventive Maintenance (PM) is an increasingly popular group of “best practices” that are used to increase a facilities’ overall efficiency. The benefits of applying these preventive maintenance best practices will be discussed in this blog as well as why it is worth your time and effort.

Your facility will be headed to higher efficiency and greater profit with the addition of a PM program.

What Is Preventative Maintenance?

Preventive Maintenance (also called “preventative” maintenance) is a systematic approach to building operations and practices that aim to prevent catastrophic equipment failures before they occur. The goal is to keep an asset in good working condition so that asset can be used to its full productive capacity.

To accomplish this goal, facilities personnel perform routine inspections, maintenance and repairs on assets to ensure they work as the designer intended. Fully functioning equipment allows the facilities maintenance staff to focus less on costly reactive repairs and more on upcoming planned maintenance tasks.

#1: Saving Money and Increase Profit

Corrective maintenance costs are much higher that preventative maintenance costs. In the United States “Corrective” versus “Preventive” costs are 5 time greater. With the use of preventive maintenance planning practices, these costly repairs and equipment replacements are drastically reduced. Maintenance costs are measured as a percentage of the “Replacement Asset Value”. World Class companies maintain this cost as 3% of the replacement cost of an asset.

Energy costs are also reduced because equipment is running at its optimum level. Unmaintained equipment always runs at lesser efficiencies than equipment that is regularly maintained.

A sustained maintenance program increases profit by increasing product output with the same number of assets. Well maintained equipment runs longer and reduces the expense of capital replacement. This in turn reduces the total cost per unit of output. This leads to an increase in competitiveness and an increase in market share. By adhering to best preventive maintenance practices you improve performance, lower cost and increase productivity while maintaining a safe work environment.

#2: Reduce Unexpected Disruptions and Asset Downtime

One very positive benefit of a preventative maintenance program is little or no downtime. Regular equipment checks and service allows you to discover small issues and address them before they cause any recordable downtime. You are always aware of the current state of your equipment and are not caught off guard if equipment breaks.

Your equipment runs longer when the components in the equipment are not run to failure. With proper planning, you will have the spare parts needed and technicians on hand to ensure the equipment reaches its predicted end of useful life.

Your equipment runs longer when the components in the equipment are not run to failure.

World Class organizations measure the number of times a maintenance craft person visits the storeroom to get parts needed versus when parts are supposed to be there but are not available. Only 3% of the time is what great organizations allow.

#3: Planning Ahead and Budgeting for Upcoming Maintenance

A key aspect of preventive maintenance is scheduled maintenance on equipment. This aspect means most repairs are planned in advance and the program is able to stick to an expected budget.

With repairs planned out, all replacement parts and personnel can be included into the budget. In order to make these plans, assets, parts, and personnel must be tracked to plan out your maintenance activities, giving you full control over the program. The benchmark in World Class companies is 85% of all your work activity should be planned and your schedule compliance should be maintained at 90%.

#4: Safer Work Environment

Nearly all facility managers would agree that maintaining safety in their buildings is a top priority. Assets that are kept to the highest maintenance standards are less likely to cause serious harm to the operator. Facilities are made safer by the reduction of catastrophic failures of the equipment when that equipment is maintained at the highest levels. When quality is improved, so is safety.