You can never be too prepared, right? While most businesses rely on four key types of maintenance strategies, there are several more to consider to optimize your organization’s operational needs. We’ll explain the core types of maintenance and how to choose the best maintenance strategy for your organization.
What Are the Key Types of Maintenance?
In industrial settings, the four most common types of maintenance are reactive maintenance, preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance, and reliability-centered maintenance. However, there are also numerous different maintenance strategies to be aware of. Altogether, the types of maintenance employed by industrial operations are
- Reactive maintenance
- Preventive maintenance
- Predictive maintenance (PdM)
- Reliability-centered maintenance (RCM)
- Condition-based maintenance
- Risk-based maintenance
- Emergency maintenance
- Routine maintenance
- Planned maintenance
- Total productive maintenance
- Prescriptive maintenance
- Opportunistic maintenance
The best maintenance strategy to use will depend on your organization’s operational needs. You might decide to use computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software, outsource your maintenance needs, or invest in staff training to serve your chosen maintenance strategy.
The 12 Types of Maintenance, Explained
Every maintenance strategy has pluses and minuses; most operations combine several different types of maintenance to meet their needs.
Reactive Maintenance (RM)
Reactive maintenance — also known as run-to-failure or corrective maintenance — involves repairing equipment after it has reached the point of failure. Companies may intentionally employ reactive maintenance as a cost-cutting maintenance strategy for non-repairable and inessential equipment.
However, this type of maintenance is not the most advantageous approach for critical assets, since reactively repairing them will cause unexpected and costly slowdowns in production.
Preventive Maintenance (PM)
Preventive maintenance refers to proactively repairing machinery and other assets before failure occurs. Other maintenance categories exist within preventative maintenance such as time-based (e.g., every six months or even on a weekly basis) or usage-based maintenance. This kind of routine maintenance helps teams get ahead of issues during planned visits.
Businesses may choose this option for low- to medium-priority assets that would be too expensive to repair after failure. But when used broadly, this maintenance strategy can also contribute to unnecessary labor and costs.
Predictive Maintenance (PdM)
Predictive maintenance employs condition-based monitoring via connected sensors to forecast potential equipment failures. When connected to condition-monitoring software like a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS), teams can use predictive maintenance data to optimize the allocation of physical resources. Closely monitoring equipment can help detect failures before they escalate into imminent risks.
Predictive maintenance requires upfront financial investment in Internet of Things (IoT) technology. But in the long term, PdM delivers a high return on investment (ROI) by allowing for precise and timely maintenance.
Reliability-centered Maintenance (RCM)
Reliability-centered maintenance stems from a top-down management approach to improve overall system reliability.
Using RCM, businesses develop a custom plan or roadmap to analyze the potential failures of each individual asset in the operation and strategize maintenance solutions based on how critical each piece of equipment is to the larger facility. These plans tend to be highly complex and may require partners or consultants outside the business to manage and execute them across a large industrial system.
Condition-based Maintenance (CBM)
Unlike time-based strategies that implement maintenance on a fixed schedule, condition-based strategies only proceed with maintenance if asset condition warrants it. CBM is also a more proactive approach than reactive maintenance as it relies on visual inspection and close monitoring of key failure indicators.
While condition-based maintenance is a realistic and inexpensive maintenance strategy, it is not as reliable as other types of maintenance — like predictive smart technologies — when it comes to detecting potential failures.
Risk-based Maintenance (RBM)
Risk-based maintenance strategies take a strategic, data-based approach to asset failure. Using risk-based assessments of machine data, businesses will calculate the probability of failure for each unit. Then, employees will allocate more time and resources toward monitoring and maintaining equipment with the highest risk of breakdown.
Like other types of maintenance, risk-based tactics seek to minimize downtime and reduce the likelihood of asset failures significantly impacting industrial operations.
Emergency Maintenance
When equipment breaks down and poses an immediate risk to employee safety and operations, repair teams will conduct emergency maintenance. Sometimes, sensors or other automated systems will signal the alarm for emergency maintenance, but other times, workers will flag the imminent risk.
Businesses should develop emergency maintenance protocols to prevent equipment failure from causing additional damage or downtime in other parts of the operation.
Routine Maintenance
Routine maintenance encompasses any periodic maintenance tasks that are scheduled in advance. These tasks are performed after a set amount of time and happen regardless of whether an asset actively needs to be repaired. Routine maintenance can be carried out on a daily, weekly, monthly, or annual basis. It can range from simple surface cleaning to more complex machine service.
Planned Maintenance
Most organizations plan ahead to stay on top of maintenance problems and keep their operations on track. Planned maintenance refers to all maintenance activities that are planned and scheduled in advance. Within planned maintenance, there are two subcategories: planned preventive and planned unscheduled maintenance work.
Planned preventive maintenance relies on a schedule to maintain assets, whether they are damaged or not. On the other hand, companies also need a plan in place should an asset unexpectedly fail. When this failure happens, businesses fall back on unscheduled maintenance strategies they have made in advance.
Total Productive Maintenance
Total productive maintenance (TPM) differs from other types of maintenance by involving employees at all levels in the asset management process. This strategy instructs workers to observe and maintain their own equipment, and TPM reduces the burden on the maintenance crew and makes faster issue discovery and repair possible. Companies that employ TPM strive to maximize and achieve near-perfect productivity by eliminating errors and preventing unnecessary repairs.
Prescriptive Maintenance
Machine learning has altered the playing field for many types of maintenance strategies. Under prescriptive maintenance, artificial intelligence (AI) analyzes data from the equipment to recommend specific maintenance actions and adjustments to operations.
This type of smart maintenance strategy offers businesses flexible options for keeping equipment in pristine condition, building upon predictive maintenance to not only predict potential failures but also identify fixes.
Opportunistic Maintenance
Opportunistic maintenance, or opportunity maintenance, is a preventive strategy that takes advantage of downtime to make repairs. If one unit experiences a planned or unplanned shutdown, teams can take advantage of repair time and available resources to work on other important assets.
Opportunistic maintenance stands in contrast to conventional types of maintenance, which focus on fixing one unit of equipment at a time. Companies may utilize algorithms to determine what kind of maintenance is best suited for opportunistic methods.
How to Choose the Best Maintenance Strategy
Now, you’ve got all the information — it’s time to decide what type, or types of maintenance will work best for your business. Let’s take a shift in mindset:
Choosing Types of Maintenance: Using the Four Ps of Maintenance
When approaching your maintenance strategy, it can be useful to consider the four Ps of maintenance: presentation, protection, preparation and partnership.
Let’s break those down:
- Presentation – seamless output and no unexpected downtime helps your business present its best face to the industry. Good maintenance ensures this optimal presentation and shows that your systems are professional and offer a consistency that is appealing to both your clients and partners. Think about the first impression someone has when they step into your building. You wouldn’t let it fall into disrepair or allow it to look untidy. Approach maintenance the same way, remembering that seamless output is a critical part of how your business presents itself.
- Protection – protecting your staff by ensuring safety standards are given the utmost attention should always be a top priority. In addition, reputational damage and reduced client expectations may result from safety-related issues. Good maintenance protects your staff, clients and business as much as possible by helping you pre-empt problems and ensure minimal interruptions or unexpected outage.
- Preparation – the old adage goes that knowledge is power. Nobody wants to doom-monger but understanding what can happen and accounting for it in advance will ensure minimal interruptions. If you can prepare and put measures in place to account for any interruptions in output or machinery downtime with the least disruption possible, it shows your clients and your staff that you can mitigate risk. Doing this in advance (for example, via preventative maintenance), rather than allowing stressful situations or breakages to occur (reactive maintenance), and investing in maintenance before you have to, means problems can usually be resolved more quickly. It also shows strong leadership and long-term investment.
- Partnership – when maintenance is this important, it makes sense to outsource it to experts or use technology, such as a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS), that will help you implement the best strategy for your organization. This might mean partnering with an external business, using smart tech tools, or combining elements with your in-house teams. Working in partnership either with technology or experts means businesses can focus on core priorities, knowing maintenance concerns are properly being taken care of.
Overview of Different Maintenance Strategies
While there are many different types of maintenance as outlined above, it’s sensible to remember that the key strategies fall under preventive or corrective:
- Preventive
The basic idea is to stop machinery from breaking down by investing in it. This might be via sensors or other technological alerts, regular checks by internal or external maintenance experts, or using the equipment reliability or condition to inform decision-making around parts replacement or servicing. In short, preventive maintenance encompasses: predictive, reliability-centered, condition-based, risk-based, planned, total productive and prescriptive maintenance.
- Corrective
This strategy involves waiting for a breakdown (a run-to-failure approach) to conduct maintenance or replace machinery. The aim is to prevent unnecessary investment or labor until it becomes unavoidable. This might seem efficient, but it can be more costly to conduct emergency maintenance, and your outage time might be longer than if potential issues were addressed pre-emptively.
Choosing the Right Type of Maintenance for Your Operations
Whether you choose a preventive or corrective maintenance approach depends on your business and the risk relative to life and reputation of an unexpected or lengthy outage. Make your decision based on:
Critical Assets
How vital is the equipment to operations? Prioritize any critical equipment when considering predictive or preventive maintenance. You might consider a reactive or corrective approach for less vital equipment.
Cost Analysis
What are the potential costs of each form of maintenance? Evaluating the potential financial impact of unexpected downtime, emergency repairs, and loss of productivity in comparison with the annual or longer-term cost of implementing a preventive or predictive maintenance strategy.
Available Resources
Examine your available resources, like in-house expertise, technology and budget. You might determine that leveraging existing resources makes preventive maintenance a cost-effective option. If the team’s resources are limited but you have the budget, implementing a predictive strategy might make more sense.
Business Goals
You probably have big ambitions for your business. They are only achievable, however, if your resources aren’t regularly derailed to respond to failures or emergencies. Identifying your goals (this might include increasing output, cutting costs, and reducing risk) should help you when selecting the maintenance strategy that can best support your organization. Removing the distraction of potential downtime or disaster can help make your objectives clearer.
Integrating Multiple Types of Maintenance Effectively
As we’ve shown in this article, there are multiple approaches to maintenance, but several can work together as an effective combination. With the help of sensors and IoT-enabled technology, your organization can have a predictive system that supports regular preventive maintenance and integrates with a CMMS to chart progress and alerts. A good business manager can impose a reliability-based approach that utilizes available resources and takes into account key business objectives and critical assets.
