10 Things To Include in a Preventive Maintenance Audit

How To Create an Effective and Efficient Preventive Maintenance Audit

Preventive maintenance (PM) audits may seem like a sea of opportunity when it comes to optimizing your preventive maintenance program. 

But like the ocean, there are plenty of fish.

Wading through countless work orders and asset procurement data can seem like an insurmountable task. PM audits are necessary, but how are they even possible — and why are they so important?

This article aims to define preventive maintenance audits and provide insight into how they can be effectively performed.

What Is a Preventive Maintenance Audit?

Preventive maintenance is a time-based proactive approach to asset and equipment upkeep in the form of inspections followed by corrective repairs. A preventive maintenance audit is a systematic review and evaluation of a PM plan to ensure that it:

• Is effective

• Is compliant and on time

• Is necessary; and

• Reduces cost and waste

By auditing your preventive maintenance program, you can be sure that it is producing reliable asset health and function while minimizing downtime and operational lifecycle costs. 

Audits typically include a comprehensive inspection of maintenance imperatives, including:

• Scheduling

• Safety standards

• Training 

• Equipment health

• Maintenance priorities and practices

• Management of documents, inventory, and budget

Why Are Preventive Maintenance Audits Important?

Preventive maintenance audits provide insights into the efficacy of PM programs regarding asset health, safety standards, and maintenance budgets. They may help you correct disparities, set benchmarks, and implement solutions that optimize your PM operations. 

Audits prioritize which preventive maintenance tasks are most impactful and necessary. 

According to Oniqua Enterprise Analytics, up to 30% of preventive maintenance tasks may be performed too frequently. Unnecessary maintenance tasks can overburden your PM budget and remove focus from maintenance tasks that are vital to maintaining the health, safety, and longevity of your assets. 

Audits may help your preventive maintenance programs manage your maintenance budget and reduce costs. 

According to data from IBM, up to 40% of a company’s budget spent on preventive maintenance programs may be negligible if the program does not focus primarily on tasks that prevent failure. Auditing your PM program may help you reduce costs by shifting the focus away from menial maintenance tasks that would not result in downtime (i.e. replacing light bulbs that haven’t already burnt out).

Audits may ensure that your preventive maintenance programs remain compliant with safety regulations and standards.

Preventive maintenance audits ensure that asset operations remain safe and compliant with industry standards by verifying that:

• Maintenance tasks are performed at the industry standard intervals; and 

• All necessary inspections, repairs, and replacements are being carried out

Furthermore, a report published by the Aberdeen Group found that businesses that prioritized and audited their preventive maintenance programs had a 90% compliance audit pass rate, compared to the 68% pass rate score for companies that did not. 

How Do You Audit Preventive Maintenance?

Every year your company churns out thousands of work orders to keep your equipment in top-working order. Auditing each one would be unrealistic, to say the least. 

So how do you effectively and proficiently audit your PM program without throwing too much of your time and resources at it? Instead of auditing every single work order for each piece of equipment, narrow your focus toward your most crucial assets. 

To determine which work orders have the most impact, find out which assets are the:

• Largest product output contributors

• Greatest safety risks

• Most costly to maintain 

10 Steps To Add to Your Preventive Maintenance Audit Checklist

Once you’ve decided which of your assets should be considered in your preventive maintenance audit, you can begin to run through each of these steps to optimize your maintenance operations.

#1: Collect Information on the Previous Year’s Work Orders

To begin your preventive maintenance audit, you’ll need to determine which assets and equipment will be considered in the audit. This will help you define the scope of your work order assessment. 

When organizing your work orders, it is necessary to separate unplanned maintenance from planned/preventive maintenance. This will help you identify and implement possible preventive maintenance solutions that may decrease unplanned maintenance occurrences. 

This may be difficult to collect if you are not utilizing a CMMS. Sorting through binders of paperwork orders and inputting them into spreadsheets can be tedious and time-consuming. 

By utilizing UpKeep’s CMMS solution, you can record and centralize all your work order and work order data for easy tracking and analysis.

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#2: Review Work Orders for Problems

Once you have all the necessary information, you can use it to extract relevant data like:

• Trends in unexpected breakdowns

• Frequent part replacements on similar equipment

• Work orders that take an excessive amount of time to complete

• Total costs for unplanned and planned maintenance

Again, spotting trends in data may be difficult on your own. Some computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) have data tracking capabilities that make it easy to review your work orders to spot problems and irregularities. 

UpKeep’s Asset Operations Management Platform (AOMP) also offers reporting and analytic tools, which can help users analyze work order data and identify areas of improvement in preventive maintenance programs. 

#3: Assess Frequency of Tasks

Decide how frequently preventive maintenance should be done for each of your assets. A good way to determine this is by reviewing the results of your asset inspections.

If the machine requires less corrective maintenance, your PM schedule is working. If the equipment is experiencing frequent breakdowns in between inspections, you may need to shorten its preventive maintenance intervals. If, during inspections, you do not find any problems, try increasing the intervals between PM duties to cut down unnecessary maintenance tasks. 

You could also use a ranking system like the one below to determine the importance and frequency of preventive maintenance audits:

• Audit first and most frequently:

• • Essential equipment

  • Resources and assets with high failure rates

  • Preventive maintenance dealing with compliance, health, or safety

• Audit second and twice a year:

• • Assets that are used regularly

  • Preventive maintenance that is time-consuming

  • Preventive maintenance that is expensive

• Audit third and once a year:

• Less critical assets that incur low usage

• Resources and assets with low failure rates

• Preventive maintenance that isn’t done very often

#4: Check Parts Usage

Equipment parts may make up a decent portion of most maintenance, and over time they may add up in costs and productivity. 

Identify which parts are used the most, and see if you can find any random machine failures that may be associated with a specific part. Buying low-quality machine parts may cost you more in maintenance costs rather than part costs. 

You can also compare the costs and quality of your current parts supplier with alternative suppliers to decide which one provides the most cost-effective and high-quality parts. 

UpKeep’s maintenance software comes with a feature that tracks and records your equipment parts inventory so you can easily spot patterns in your parts usage. By tracking your parts usage history with UpKeep, you can:

• Improve inventory management

• Identify trends 

• Make more informed ordering decisions with inventory management and procurement

#5: Determine Equipment Criticality

Assessing your equipment criticality can help you understand: 

• Which repairs and corrective actions should be prioritized

• What backlogged tasks should be at the top of your PM schedule

• How many technicians should be assigned to the work to decrease downtime and mitigate safety issues

Auditing your preventive maintenance schedule and duties may ensure that your critical tasks fit well into your schedule and that the appropriate resources are devoted to your most critical assets.

#6: Examine Levels of Specialization

To further strengthen your preventive maintenance operations with an audit, determine the levels of specialization needed to perform routine maintenance duties. Break down the levels of specialization while considering these three questions:

1. Does the task require a specialized skill to complete?

2. Do you have any members of your team with this skill? If so, how many?

3. Will the work require help from a specialist?

PM duties that require a specialist can constrain your schedule. By grouping tasks that necessitate a specialist, you can decrease costs and time spent traveling.

#7: Inventory Backup Equipment

Remember to take your backup equipment into account when conducting a preventive maintenance audit. Your backup equipment may be your go-to during breakdowns and downtimes, but it can be used for low-risk maintenance experimentation. 

Using backup equipment to test new efficiency-optimizing strategies also gives you the option to:

• Ensure that your PM intervals are gauged appropriately

• Test your sensors and performance monitoring devices 

• Reduce maintenance technician workload by teaching your machine operators how to perform small maintenance duties

While these strategies allow you to enhance your PM routines, make sure your backup equipment is still readily available in case your primary assets break down.

#8: Compare Actual Time on Task to Estimated Time on Task

Track how much time is spent on preventive maintenance tasks. Reasons that may lead to tasks taking longer than usual include:

• The task was assigned to the wrong individual.

• The estimation for how long the task might take was miscalculated.

• More technicians are required to complete the task.

• Not enough provisions were allotted to complete the task.

• The task was interrupted.

Consider these factors when comparing how much time is required to perform PM tasks. 

UpKeep’s CMMS capabilities allow you to easily track and compare time on work orders. By monitoring tasks with UpKeep, you can adequately adjust your schedule after conducting your preventive maintenance audit.

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#9: Map the Impact of Equipment Failure

Some breakdowns cause minor inconveniences, while others cause operation-ending catastrophes. One might cause you a headache and another may cost your facility thousands of dollars. 

A good preventive maintenance audit will prioritize the PM tasks that help prevent catastrophic equipment failures. You can map the impact of equipment failures by:

• Creating failure codes to track and trigger corrective maintenance work orders

• Scheduling corrective maintenance for low-impact failure codes together

• Tracking the mean time to correct equipment failures and schedule corrective and proactive maintenance duties

UpKeep makes it easy to create and track failure codes, prioritize work orders based on impact, and submit and monitor work orders on high-impact failures. With our CMMS and asset management tracking system, you can also automate corrective work orders to be triggered when a specific failure code is produced. 

#10: Determine Which Tasks Can Be Completed While Equipment Is Operational

To decrease the downtime associated with preventive maintenance, you’ll need to optimize your PM schedule. 

Which machines must be fully shut down to safely perform maintenance tasks and inspections? Which machines can be operated while the PM is being performed?

If there is a machine that can be safely operated while undergoing maintenance in a time slot where the machine would be off anyway, consider rescheduling it to free up time for a machine that cannot. 

How Often Should You Perform a Preventive Maintenance Audit?

Some experts recommend performing audits at least once a year or every six months. The frequency of your preventive maintenance audits may be determined by the frequency and efficacy of your current PM program. 

Two methods can be used to set your preventive maintenance standards, which include:

1. Calendar-based: Also referred to as time-based or periodic maintenance, calendar-based maintenance is the most common type of PM. It typically relies on a system that sets a recurring, frequent schedule. Depending on the asset, calendar-based preventive maintenance may be performed weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. 

2. Usage-based: Also referred to as meter-based maintenance or condition-based, usage-based maintenance relies on metrics to determine when PM should be scheduled. Using software, like UpKeep, an operator will log meter readings and when those readings reach a certain level, the software will automatically schedule preventive maintenance work orders. 

Calendar-based preventive maintenance audits may need to be evaluated to eliminate waste and identify impactful issues. Usage-based audits may not require the same intensity of investigation, since this type of schedule is more similar to predictive maintenance. 

A big obstacle to preventive maintenance audits is pinpointing which preventive maintenance tasks will effectively prevent breakdowns and which may not. IBM estimates that only 11% of breakdowns and failures are age-related, while 89% of failures are random. 

Where preventive maintenance may not be totally ineffective at preventing random failures, predictive maintenance coupled with Internet of Things (IoT) sensors may be an effective supplement to PM audits. 

UpKeep offers a comprehensive asset-tracking solution to calendar-based maintenance quandaries. 

By utilizing our IoT SensrTrx sensors, you can collect data that automatically triggers preventive maintenance work orders in UpKeep based on run time or the number of parts produced. In addition to IoT sensor integration, UpKeep Edge allows users to track IoT sensor readings to help you maximize the lifespan and ROI of your assets. 

UpKeep’s Asset Operations Management Solution Is Built With Maintenance Teams in Mind

Don’t find yourself drowning in spreadsheets and thousands of work orders while performing preventive maintenance audits. 

Swim through data, fish out trends in work orders, and paddle past PM audit obstacles with UpKeep’s comprehensive maintenance asset management software. 

With our system, you can:

• Track and monitor work order completion and details: Our CMMS allows technicians to quickly update work orders and provide additional notes regarding specific maintenance tasks. 

• Automatically schedule preventive maintenance work orders based on usage-based metrics: Our IoT capabilities will automatically schedule corrective work orders to help decrease equipment downtime and automate the maintenance process. 

• Gain insight on asset health and trends: UpKeep’s data and analytics feature makes it easy to spot trends in failure code frequency and downtimes. By using PM-related data to set the standard, you can target which assets and tasks are the most critical.

• And more

Avoid sinking unnecessary time and resources into futile preventive maintenance activities. Optimize your preventive maintenance audit with the help of UpKeep. Request a demo today. 

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