Why Is Preventive Maintenance Important?
The goal of preventive maintenance (PM) is to keep machines and equipment operational through regular inspections, servicing, and part replacements — before they break down. The reactive approach ("we'll fix it when it breaks") can be 3–10x more expensive than planned maintenance.
The numbers speak for themselves:
- Unplanned downtime is 10–20x more expensive than planned maintenance
- Preventive maintenance reduces unexpected failures by 30%
- Equipment lifespan is extended by 20–40%
The 6 Steps to Implementing Preventive Maintenance
Step 1: Build an Asset Inventory
The first step is always to survey your entire equipment fleet. Collect the details of every asset that needs maintenance: type, location, year of manufacture, warranty, criticality. An asset registry helps with this — but to begin with, an Excel sheet will do the job.
Step 2: Prioritise Your Assets
Not every machine is equally critical. Classify your assets:
- Category A (critical): if it goes down, all production stops
- Category B (important): a failure reduces capacity, but not everything halts
- Category C (supplementary): a failure has minimal impact on production
Start preventive maintenance with the Category A assets.
Step 3: Define the Maintenance Intervals
Create a maintenance plan for each asset:
- Time-based: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly (e.g. a filter change every month)
- Usage-based: by operating hours, mileage, or cycle count (e.g. an oil change every 500 operating hours)
- Condition-based: based on temperature, vibration, or wear measurements
Step 4: Create Checklists
For each maintenance type, create a standard checklist that the technician follows. This ensures the same protocol is applied every time and that no one skips a step.
Step 5: Automate the Scheduling
Manual scheduling (a calendar, reminders, keeping it all in your head) doesn't scale. Preventive maintenance software automatically generates work orders based on the intervals, notifies the technicians, and won't let a task be missed.
Step 6: Measure and Fine-Tune
Keep an eye on the key metrics:
- MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures): the average time between two failures — this should increase
- MTTR (Mean Time To Repair): the average repair time — this should decrease
- PM completion rate: what percentage of planned tasks are completed on time — target: 90%+
Fine-tune the intervals based on the data: if a machine never fails between two inspections, the interval can be less frequent. If it fails often, tighten it up.
The Role of Preventive Maintenance Software
CMMS maintenance software (like ServiceLeaf) brings all of the above steps into a single system: asset inventory, prioritisation, intervals, checklists, automatic scheduling, and KPI measurement — all on one platform, and accessible from a phone too.