7 consejos para un mejor programa de mantenimiento preventivo

How to Implement a Preventive Maintenance Program: Tips for Implementation and Common Mistakes To Avoid 

Implementing a preventive maintenance program is crucial for maintaining the health and efficiency of equipment, facilities, and systems. Preventive maintenance aims to minimize downtime, extend asset life, and reduce costly repairs by addressing potential issues before they become major problems. 

In this guide, we will break down how to implement an effective preventive maintenance program and how to avoid common implementation mistakes.

Table of Contents

• What Is a Preventive Maintenance Program?

• How to Implement a Preventive Maintenance Program

• 7 Tips for a Better Preventive Maintenance Program

• 8 Common Preventive Maintenance Program Mistakes

• UpKeep Can Help You Build a Better Preventive Maintenance Program

What Is a Preventive Maintenance Program?

A preventive maintenance program is necessary to prevent equipment failure, keep assets in good shape, and avoid costly unplanned downtime. It is a must in any production facility and includes:

• Processes

• Guidelines; and

• Tools

Development of a good preventive maintenance program takes solid planning to succeed. Facilities that want to avoid reactive maintenance, where assets are repaired or restored only when they break down or start performing poorly, should work together to create a preventive maintenance plan. 

A great PM plan should:

• Define goals and responsibilities

• Make timelines clear

• Account for all resources

Here are some tips to get you started.

How to Implement a Preventive Maintenance Program

A solid preventive maintenance program can generate significant cost savings and return on investment. According to one report by the International Facilities Management Association, one company scenario generated a 545 percent ROI through a preventive maintenance program on an industrial chiller. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that preventive maintenance can save between 12 percent and 18 percent on energy usage.

However, it’s also important that a preventive maintenance program is implemented properly. In fact, IBM reported that as much as half of the money spent creating a preventive maintenance plan can be wasted if maintenance tasks do not prevent failure. Simply checking all equipment and performing maintenance tasks alone will not necessarily improve reliability or performance. Here are key steps to implementing a solid preventive maintenance program.

Identify Critical Assets

First, you need to determine your most critical assets. These are typically equipment or systems that, if they fail, would have a significant impact on operations, safety, or costs. It's crucial to identify critical assets that have particular failure modes which can be prevented by a good preventive maintenance plan.

Start by assessing how frequently you use the equipment, its historical failure data, what replacement and repair costs look like, and its impact on production or services. 

Gather Equipment Information

Once critical assets are identified, gather detailed information about each one. This may include the manufacturer’s recommendations for maintenance and equipment manuals and warranties. Consider the age, condition, and usage patterns of each asset as well as their maintenance history and known issues. This data can guide you in determining maintenance intervals and which procedures are necessary.

Develop a Maintenance Schedule

Based on the equipment data and manufacturer recommendations, create a maintenance schedule that outlines the frequency and type of maintenance each asset requires. For example, HVAC systems may need quarterly inspections, while vehicles may require oil changes every 5,000 miles. Be sure to adjust the schedule based on operational demands and asset conditions and include both short-term tasks that need to be completed on a weekly or monthly basis as well as long-term or annual maintenance tasks. Once you've established your maintenance schedule be sure to incorporate frequent inspections before components or parts are expected to break down. That way you'll be able to catch any potential problems early enough to avoid downtime.

Define Maintenance Procedures

For each asset, define detailed maintenance procedures that need to be followed, which includes step-by-step tasks to be performed. Ideally, include pictures and diagrams to help guide technicians. Also be sure you have the required tools, parts, and safety protocols in place and define the expected outcomes such as oil levels or ideal temperature readings. Make sure these procedures are clear and accessible to all maintenance personnel, and provide training if necessary.

Allocate Resources and Assign Responsibilities

Match employee skill sets with assigned tasks. By properly assigning tasks to the right level of trained employee or outside consultant, you'll maximize your labor investment. You may even want to invest in ongoing training of this team so they can perform the required maintenance task completely and effectively without fail. Ensure that there is a clear understanding of who is responsible for each task, when it should be completed, and how it should be documented. Additionally, allocate resources such as tools, spare parts, and safety equipment to ensure the maintenance can be performed efficiently.

Implement a Work Order System

To manage and track maintenance tasks, implement a work order system. This system allows you to schedule preventive maintenance tasks, track work completion and performance, and manage inventory of parts and tools. You may want to use a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) to generate reports to monitor program effectiveness.

Also, mindfully schedule work orders. Set up efficient work patterns for your maintenance technicians. If you can minimize the time technicians spend traveling from one service project to the next, your entire maintenance department will run more smoothly and efficiently. Be sure to schedule maintenance tasks when production lines are naturally down instead of interrupting workflows.

Monitor and Adjust the Program

A successful preventive maintenance program requires continuous monitoring and adjustment. Regularly evaluate the program’s effectiveness by reviewing maintenance logs for trends and tracking asset performance and failure rates. Be sure to gather feedback from maintenance staff and operators. If assets still experience unexpected failures or if maintenance tasks seem unnecessary, adjust the schedule or procedures accordingly.

Train and Educate Your Team

Training is critical to the success of any preventive maintenance program. Ensure your team is familiar with the preventive maintenance schedules and procedures and skilled in using maintenance tools and equipment. Most importantly, be sure they are aware of safety protocols and emergency procedures. Provide ongoing education to keep your team up-to-date with new equipment, technologies, and techniques.

Incorporate Preventive Maintenance into Broader Asset Management

Finally, make sure preventive maintenance is part of your broader asset management strategy. It should align with your organization’s goals, including reducing downtime, improving reliability, and minimizing costs. Regularly communicate the importance of preventive maintenance to upper management, operations, and maintenance teams to ensure company-wide support.

7 Tips for a Better Preventive Maintenance Program

Tip #1: Focus PM Tasks on Specific Failure Modes

Money spent on preventive maintenance programs is often wasted because the tasks maintenance crews perform don’t actually prevent anything. When creating your PM plan, focus each task on preventing a specific failure mode.

Failure-mode-oriented inspections and PMs will help you target tasks to prevent breakdowns that could have a high impact on your operations. That means less time wasted on PMs that accomplish nothing and greater equipment effectiveness.

Tip #2: Apply Skills Where They’re Needed

As you determine which PMs you need to perform on each piece of equipment, it helps to outline what kinds of skills are needed for each task. Most of them can be carried out by your in-house staff, and often, simple tasks such as inspections won’t generally need highly skilled tradespeople.

On the other hand, some tasks may require more specialized skill sets, in which case your most experienced technicians — or even outside talent — may be necessary.

Ultimately, it comes down to making sure you have the right people for each job.

Tip #3: Create Efficient Routes

Your inspection routes should follow an efficient path. If technicians are zig-zagging back and forth through your facility on a routine inspection, it will take more time than it needs to.

In addition, multiple smaller routes may be more efficient than one long one. A massive inspection route may put a drain on your technicians, making it more difficult to complete on time. Breaking things up can also help you focus the instruments and tools used in the inspections on the specific tasks your personnel will be performing.

Maintenance schedules can also benefit from establishing a pre-planned, streamlined route. Tasks performed during a given shift can follow a similar route to those established for inspections, minimizing travel times and potentially improving schedule compliance.

Tip #4: Inspect Frequently

Each inspection should be scheduled frequently enough to catch problems before they have a chance to develop into major breakdowns. As such, a good rule of thumb is to take the average time it takes a failure to develop (or a failure development period) and cut that in half to get your inspection frequency.

Take the bearings used in a mixer, for instance. If they are normally projected to last two weeks from the time they start showing signs of wear, you’d want to inspect them weekly. If you inspect them once every two weeks, they might completely wear out between inspections, causing a complete stop in production.

The tools you use in inspections might alter failure development periods by allowing you to detect issues further in advance. The result is more time to resolve the issue before it develops.

Tip #5: Use Manufacturer Materials to Establish Frequencies

When determining failure development times, it helps to look at the materials provided by manufacturers. Often, the manufacturers of the replacement parts and equipment you use will provide failure development times in their materials, making the task of establishing inspection frequencies much easier from the start.

Note, however, that the running speeds and stresses in your processes may significantly alter the rate at which any given part could wear out, so experience within your facility is still valuable.

Tip #6: Stay on Schedule

Most preventive maintenance plans include specific time-based intervals, which should be carefully adhered to. As you plan and schedule preventive maintenance tasks for your program, make sure you stay on schedule. Failing to complete PMs on time (or at least within a day or two of when they should be completed) can result in extra wear on parts that should be kept well-maintained.

Measuring preventive maintenance schedule compliance can help you gauge how well you’re staying on track, with deviations giving you an idea of areas where your team isn’t quite making it. For instance, if PMs on one piece of equipment don’t tend to be completed on time, there may be an issue with accessing that piece of equipment, or it might be too far out of the way of your current routes.

A standard rule of thumb is to complete tasks within 10% of their scheduled frequency. That means if a task occurs every 30 days, it should be completed within three days of its due date (or no earlier or later than a day and a half).

Tip #7: Involve Operators

Your operations crew can help with preventive maintenance, taking much of the load off your maintenance technicians and freeing up precious time. Simple tasks such as cleaning, inspections, and minor repairs can frequently be entrusted to those who engage with the machines regularly.

In addition, your maintenance team should be in consistent contact with operations, keeping them aware of when planned tasks are scheduled to occur. Doing so facilitates cooperation when equipment needs to be taken offline for PM, ultimately expediting the process.

8 Common Preventive Maintenance Program Mistakes

Along with using the above steps and tips, it’s important to avoid the mistakes facilities often make when implementing PM programs. Some of the most common preventive maintenance planning mistakes include the following.

Mistake #1: Unclear Instructions

Failing to include clear step-by-step instructions in your PMs leads to an increased chance of failure. Each PM task should include:

• What to look for

• Which measurements to use

• What to do for each task

Preventive maintenance checklists can help make your PMs clearer.

Mistake #2: Completing Tasks Too Early or Too Late

Most people are aware that PMs should not be completed late, but they shouldn’t be done too early either.

For instance, suppose an inspection that should be performed every 30 days is completed on the 20th of one month, the 1st of the month following, and then the 30th of the month after that. Your intervals are roughly 11 days for the first cycle (too short) and 59 days for the second (too long). Proper training and scheduling practices can help remediate this problem.

Mistake #3: Over-Maintaining Equipment

It’s also possible to schedule PMs too frequently, thus over-maintaining equipment. Numerous tasks are performed that do little, if anything, to improve equipment reliability — and in some cases, performing certain tasks too often can actually damage equipment.

Mistake #4: Lack of Prioritization

Some facilities may try to apply PM too broadly. The truth is, only a fraction of all components used in your facility’s processes will need routine maintenance, and some assets may be most efficiently managed with a run-to-failure approach. The key is to prioritize your assets and focus your efforts on the most critical.

Mistake #5: Pencil Whipping

Unfortunately, maintenance personnel may sometimes declare a PM complete without actually doing it, otherwise known as pencil whipping. Training, communicating goals, and optimizing workflows may help remedy that.

Mistake #6: Inadequate MRO Inventory

As you assess which failure modes are most critical, make sure you have sufficient replacement parts on hand to satisfy your program’s demands for maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO). Be sure to account for order lead times and costs as necessary.

Mistake #7: Failing to Track PM Data

One mistake that can exacerbate the others is failing to track the results of your PM program. Without monitoring your data, you won’t be able to see your progress, and it can be easy to let your program fall by the wayside.

A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is your best friend throughout this entire process. UpKeep’s CMMS is an easy-to-use, mobile-first software that makes tracking data easy for all stakeholders.

Mistake #8: Not Seeing the Results in Action

A properly implemented PM program will help you improve reliability in your facility while decreasing maintenance costs. When you establish and track your PM program, you’ll be able to see the results over time.

UpKeep Can Help You Build a Better Preventive Maintenance Program

UpKeep provides a solution to give maintenance and reliability teams the tools and information they need to run operations efficiently and effectively. Our intelligent and intuitive preventive maintenance tool helps today’s maintenance professionals prevent asset breakdowns before they happen. 

Start a free trial today to achieve the full useful life of your equipment and say goodbye to unplanned downtime with our preventive maintenance software.

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