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• Preventive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance 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. It is designed to preserve and enhance equipment
reliability by replacing worn components before they actually fail.
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.
Recent technological advances in tools for inspection and diagnosis
have enabled even more accurate and effective equipment
maintenance. The ideal preventive maintenance program would
prevent all equipment failure before it occurs.

Value of Preventive Maintenance
There are multiple misconceptions about preventive maintenance. One
such misconception is that PM is unduly costly. This logic dictates that
it would cost more for regularly scheduled downtime and maintenance
than it would normally cost to operate equipment until repair is
absolutely necessary. This may be true for some components;
however, one should compare not only the costs but the long-term
benefits and savings associated with preventive maintenance. Without
preventive maintenance, for example, costs for lost production time
from unscheduled equipment breakdown will be incurred. Also,
preventive maintenance will result in savings due to an increase of
effective system service life.

Long-term benefits of preventive maintenance include:
•        Improved system reliability.
•        Decreased cost of replacement.
•        Decreased system downtime.
•        Better spares inventory management.