An established Maintenance program helps save money, energy and time. That said, there are many different maintenance program options to choose. The most common of those programs are preventive, predictive, and breakdown. What is the difference between these maintenance programs? How can you decide the one that is right for you?

Predictive Maintenance

Often, you have enough data at your disposal to establish a predictive maintenance (PdM) program. PdM is not a type of program that determines if something has gone wrong. Rather, it prevents something from going wrong.

A PdM program looks at the expected, or average, the life of the equipment and related statistics. The program determines when a problem is most likely to occur, either with the equipment or with a component within the equipment. In this way, the maintenance takes place before the problem occurs.

One of the primary benefits of a predictive maintenance program is it limits downtime. It may be necessary to take the equipment offline to perform the maintenance. But since you are doing it ahead of a failure, you pick and choose the times when the maintenance occurs.

Preventative Maintenance

A preventative maintenance program looks for triggers that identify when a problem is likely to occur. It relies on testing, both online and offline, of any equipment that falls under the program. Preventative maintenance discovers any issues before a catastrophic failure.

Preventative maintenance involves routine equipment testing and maintenance when identifying a problem. Applying an effective preventative maintenance program saves you money by replacing or rebuilding a failing part.

Breakdown Maintenance

Breakdown maintenance is perhaps the least desirable of the three different types of maintenance programs. This type of maintenance involves repairing or rebuilding the equipment, just as the other maintenance programs. But the trigger event is the actual breakdown of the equipment.

Breakdown maintenance is beneficial, but only if used with preventive and predictive maintenance. It may still be necessary, at times, to use Breakdown Maintenance as a program when unexpected events take place. If it is the only type of maintenance in place, yet, it tends to be the most costly option.

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