Repair and maintenance are both essential to keeping equipment functioning efficiently, and with minimal downtime. People often use the two words interchangeably. But in fact, repairs and maintenance are very different activities.
Understanding the differences between repair and maintenance can help you develop a more effective MRO strategy. We’ll share how to conduct maintenance and repairs, increase efficiency, and slash downtime.
What Is Maintenance?
Maintenance refers to all the routine preventive activities carried out to increase asset lifespan and improve performance. Typical maintenance tasks include routine cleaning and lubrication, changing parts, and inspecting machines for signs of damage.
Maintenance is proactive. Its goal is to prevent asset breakdowns and deterioration through regular, planned care.
Of course, no matter how effective the maintenance plan is, assets will sometimes break down. That’s where repairing work comes in.
What Is Repair?
Repairs are reactive, rather than proactive. Repairs include all the work carried out to restore an asset to full functionality after it breaks or degrades.
The repair process includes diagnosing machine faults, fixing broken equipment, and performing last-minute emergency repairs.
Repair vs. Maintenance: Key Differences
Maintenance is a planned, proactive process. Repairs, however, are unplanned and reactive. Maintenance focuses on upkeep; its goal is to keep assets functioning optimally. Repairs, in contrast, focus on restoration; their goal is to make a failed asset functional again.
Since maintenance is planned, MRO teams can schedule maintenance tasks for convenient times. Cleaning, lubricating, and inspecting equipment can all happen during scheduled downtime. Maintenance tasks usually don’t interfere with production. Overall, maintenance tasks are designed to minimize unplanned downtime and keep costs low.
Repairs, by contrast, are often done once an asset has already broken down, bringing production to a halt. Repairs are designed to minimize downtime caused by equipment failure by restoring assets to full functionality as quickly as possible.
Repairs are typically more expensive than maintenance. Once an asset breaks down, it requires significant time and labor to restore functionality. The cost of new parts — and their expedited shipping — adds to the overall expense. It’s normally much more cost-effective to perform regular preventive maintenance than it is to deal with emergency repairs.
Common Examples of Maintenance and Repair Activities
Typical maintenance tasks include:
- Cleaning assets, components, and surrounding areas
- Inspecting machines for damage
- Calibrating instruments
- Changing parts
Typical repairs include:
- Correcting electrical failures
- Repairing major structural damage to an asset
- Replacing faulty components
- Diagnosing malfunctioning or poorly functioning assets
Cost Implications of Repairs vs Maintenance
It’s useful to compare the cost implications of maintenance vs repair.
Managers sometimes hesitate to invest in preventive maintenance because of the upfront costs. In reality, a good maintenance program slashes downtime and increases productivity — which equals major savings for the organization.
Almost always, repairs are considerably more expensive than preventive maintenance. Restoring a failed asset to full functionality requires extensive time, labor, and parts. It
also involves costly downtime. Depending on the asset, repairs can impact your whole
production line.
That’s why most experts recommend using a proactive maintenance program instead of relying on reactive repairs.
How CMMS Software Supports Repair and Maintenance
Using a high-quality Computerized Maintenance Management System, or CMMS, facilitates a strong maintenance and repair services program.
Implementing a preventive maintenance program can be overwhelming. A CMMS simplifies the process by:
- Scheduling and assigning preventive maintenance (PM) tasks
- Tracking PM completion rates
- Monitoring asset health
- Storing safety and compliance data
- Tracking KPIs and reporting on overall performance
- Facilitating asset lifecycle management
A good CMMS also supports data-based decisions, like whether to repair or replace
critical assets.
When to Repair vs. Replace Equipment
It’s often difficult to decide whether to repair or replace machinery. In many cases, a good maintenance program can extend the useful life of your assets, saving you the cost of replacement. However, keeping an asset too long can result in frequent breakdowns and expensive repairs.
A CMMS can help you make smart, data-driven decisions about repairing or replacing equipment. It stores key information like work order history and repair frequency, along with granular data on total repair costs, from labor hours to spare parts.
Robust reporting features provide asset repair history access, so you can easily analyze estimated repair costs for the next year. Compare that to purchasing a new asset, and the decision is easy.
Benefits of Integrating Maintenance and Repair Strategies
The benefits of integrating repairs and maintenance include:
- Reduced downtime. A strong preventive maintenance program identifies issues early on, before they lead to expensive asset failure.
- Greater efficiency. A dramatic reduction in asset failure will free up resources you need to handle emergencies when they do happen.
- Improved safety and compliance. With regular inspections — and emergency repairs as needed — you’ll see significant improvements in safety and compliance. You can also use a CMMS to track PMs, demonstrate regulatory compliance, and pass audits.
- Increased asset lifespan. Regular preventive maintenance tasks like cleaning and changing parts will extend the useful life of your equipment.
A great CMMS, like eMaint, makes integrating maintenance and repair a breeze — so you can enjoy greater operational efficiency, increased uptime, and reduced maintenance costs.