Preventive Maintenance Step #2: Planning for Preventative Actions

Time-Based Preventative Maintenance Plan

Basic preventative maintenance usually takes the form of a time-based maintenance schedule. It includes activities such as:

Lubricate equipment every two days
Change the filter every three weeks
Change particular tools every eight months
Clean and paint equipment every year to avoid rust and to notice leakages easily

Here is an example of a time-based preventative maintenance plan for pumps:

img-preventive-maintenance-2-time-checksheet

Image credit: catpumps.co.uk
For a similar template (in Excel) here.

Age-Based Preventative Maintenance Plan

Another approach to planning preventative maintenance is to account for the age of the equipment, i.e. time in operation or number of cycles performed.

An example of this is changing the oil in a traditional car should typically be done “every 3,000 miles”. However, this doesn’t apply to all cars on the road. Some cars have to carry heavier loads, drive mountainous and dusty roads, put up with extremely hot conditions, and more. This one-size-fits-all approach can be discarded if the equipment condition is monitored regularly.

Choosing Your Preventative Maintenance Approach

There are a series of questions you need to ask to establish which kind of preventative maintenance approach best suits your factory.

Here is a flowchart to sum up different maintenance approaches with the questions:

Chart Source: Maintenance, Replacement, and Reliability: Theory & Applications, 2nd edition, by Jardine and Tsang, CRC Press

For example, if it's not technically and economically feasible that condition monitoring will detect a gradual loss of the function, then a time-based maintenance approach might be more feasible.

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