If you’re looking for a more reliable and proactive maintenance strategy, it’s time to implement a preventive maintenance schedule. While scheduling maintenance can be cumbersome to manage on paper, a Computerized Maintenance Management System, or CMMS, can save you time and reduce your maintenance costs. Keep reading to learn how to implement a preventative maintenance schedule with a CMMS.
What is a Preventive Maintenance Schedule?
A preventive maintenance schedule is a framework for organizing and executing your maintenance activities. With a preventive maintenance schedule, you’ll need to coordinate your resources – including materials, equipment, and personnel needed to complete tasks on time. You’ll also need to determine who is responsible for completing each task.
The Difference Between Fixed and Floating Preventive Maintenance Schedules
PM schedules are separated into fixed or floating types. A fixed PM schedule sticks to a routine plan and focusing on future tasks, regardless of the completion status of previous tasks. For instance, if you only inspected meter gauges every other Tuesday, it would be on a fixed schedule.
Meanwhile, a floating PM is defined by the maintenance history or past usage of an asset, and each task is dependent on the timing and completion of previous work orders. In other words, floating preventative maintenance work orders will not start until the previous one is closed. A floating schedule requires more oversight and careful tracking compared to a fixed schedule.
Preventive Maintenance Schedule Examples
A team that is required to routinely check an HVAC system and electric generators, for example, could schedule it for maintenance after every 100-200 hours of operation. Completing preventive maintenance on time will ensure your assets do not experience unexpected failures that would affect your production timelines.
Keeping rotatable parts lubricated is another example of a critical preventive maintenance activity. To prevent premature failures from wear and tear, implement a fixed schedule for part lubrication that aligns with the manufacturer’s instructions.
5 Steps to Making a Preventive Maintenance Schedule with a CMMS
Keep in mind that many preventative maintenance activities can be streamlined and automated with the help of CMMS software. A CMMS gives you the power to plan, schedule, assign, and update work orders, and to include procedures, spare parts, key documents, and more.
The following are 5 fundamental steps for establishing your preventive maintenance schedules with a CMMS.
1. Sort Critical Assets by Priority
Create a list of the most vital assets and delegate workflows to them. Which items have the highest repair costs? Are there any failure modes that can be averted with PM? To spot overdue tasks, you can calculate the scheduled maintenance critical percent.
2. Gather Historical Insights on Your Assets
Be sure to record data on your work orders and unplanned downtime for each machine. Estimate how long you spent on preventive maintenance to troubleshoot common issues. How fast is the rate of depreciation on these assets? A CMMS can help you automate your record-keeping and make it easier to visualize and analyze historical trends for each of your assets. CMMS software is also ideal for identifying and analyzing your critical assets with an Asset Criticality Assessment (ACA).
3. Align Your Maintenance Schedules with the Equipment Manufacturer’s Recommendations
The best source of information is the OEM guidebook that comes with installed equipment. It should tell you the recommended schedules and how to put on spare parts. Ask your technicians and engineers about the frequency of breakdowns.
4. Design a Preventive Maintenance Schedule Template
Combine your information sources and itemize them by maintenance tasks and how often to perform them. A schedule form should include fields for the description, condition, useful life, and date checked. Here again, a CMMS can make your life much easier.
5. Verify and Adjust for Continuous Improvement
Using a CMMS is instrumental in tracking your maintenance progress and optimizing those workflows in future runs. This is where you make corrections to remove activities that don’t contribute to criticality. In the reports, identify any key points and use trends to your advantage.