Preventive maintenance

Preventive maintenance is the set of inspections, lubrication, adjustments and replacements done at defined intervals, before equipment fails. The opposite is corrective maintenance, which only acts after a breakdown, usually at the worst time and at a higher cost.

How it works

The plan defines, for each machine, what to do, how often and who does it. Intervals can be by calendar (every month) or by usage (every 500 spindle hours). Usage is fairer: a machine running three shifts needs attention before one running a single shift. When the hour meter comes straight from monitoring, the work order can open itself and be scheduled in a window without production.

Practical example

A machining center needs a coolant change and filter cleaning every 400 hours. The system reads spindle hours, opens the work order at 380 hours, sends the technician the checklist and schedules it for Saturday morning, without stopping the week’s production.

Common mistakes

• Doing calendar-only maintenance on machines with very different usage.
• Having the plan on paper with nobody following up on execution.
• Not recording what was done, which prevents tuning the intervals.