Comparing Preventive Maintenance vs. Corrective Maintenance: Anticipating to Preserve vs. Reacting Effectively

To understand the difference between corrective and preventive maintenance, consider maintenance activities to be similar to oral hygiene duties. 

Preventive maintenance is like brushing your teeth to avoid cavities, while corrective maintenance is like going to the dentist to treat a cavity. 

One prevents the cavity from happening in the first place, and the other is a reaction to the cavity occurring (even though it could have been prevented by brushing your teeth).

Let’s explore these two maintenance practices further. Keep reading to learn more about preventive and corrective maintenance.

What Is the Difference Between Corrective and Preventive Maintenance?

Corrective and preventive maintenance are two strategies used in maintenance management to increase the reliability and efficiency of a facility’s assets. 

The key difference between corrective and preventive maintenance is:

• Corrective maintenance is conducted in response to immediate issues.
• Preventive maintenance is performed routinely to prevent problems.

Preventive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance (PM) is a proactive maintenance practice conducted on a schedule to help prevent unexpected failures.

The ultimate goal of PM is to reduce unplanned downtime and optimize asset performance to minimize downtime and cut costs. 

Preventive maintenance is a cost-effective solution to infrastructure, equipment, and machine maintenance. According to the American Machinist, organizations may save 8% to 12% in total maintenance costs by investing in preventive maintenance. 

Examples 

Preventive maintenance and scheduling frequency may depend on the equipment being maintained. 

Common examples of preventive maintenance may include regular:

• Cleaning
• Inspections
• Lubrication
• Belt adjustments
• Part replacement
• Recalibration

A significant component of PM is considerate planning, scheduling, and record-keeping of past reports and work orders. Using strategic coordination, facilities can plan preventive maintenance around planned downtimes to maximize work time. 

Computerized maintenance management systems help maintenance managers and teams systematically plan PM routines using digitized work orders, schedules, asset tracking, and more. 

UpKeep’s CMMS offers an even more comprehensive maintenance management software. 

To deliver clients the ultimate tool, we combined the power of standard CMMS with:

• Enterprise asset management (EAM) software
• Edge Internet of Things (IoT) sensors 
• A customizable data hub; and 
• A vast, growing ecosystem of integrations 

Learn more about UpKeep’s revolutionary CMMS here. 

Pros

Some of the many advantages of preventive maintenance include:

• Optimizing asset performance: Routine maintenance ensures machines are running at optimal levels. 
• Discouraging unplanned downtime: PM fixes potential downtime-causing issues before they reach a point of failure.
• Extending the lifespan of equipment: Well-maintained equipment is more likely to work better and last longer.
• Enhancing safety and compliance protocols: Preventive maintenance guarantees the recommended compliance standards are met and machines can be safely operated. 
• Reducing overall maintenance costs: Less downtime and repair costs save facilities money. 

Cons

While preventive maintenance seems like a promising solution to all of your maintenance challenges, it does come with a few drawbacks, which include:

• Upfront costs: While PM saves facilities from catastrophic downtime and repair costs, industry estimates suggest preventive maintenance is 3.6–6% of overall operating costs. 
• Labor-intensity: More maintenance means more labor may be required to fulfill work orders and PM schedules. Depending on the scale of your organization, you may also have to hire someone to coordinate preventive maintenance activities. 
• Potential for waste: According to IBM, as much as 50% of your PM efforts may be wasteful if not implemented effectively. 

With UpKeep, you can diminish the potential disadvantages of PM by:

• Prioritizing and coordinating high-priority work orders
• Tracking maintenance costs
• Managing inventory and part purchasing
• Using analytics to spot where you can improve your maintenance program and make budget cuts

Corrective Maintenance

Corrective maintenance (CM) is a maintenance strategy that implements remedial tasks to repair broken down or faulty systems and equipment. 

It is synonymous with breakdown or reactive maintenance.  However, corrective maintenance is not solely waiting around for breakdowns or problems. 

Examples 

Often, corrective maintenance may be performed after an issue is identified during inspections or a separate work order.  

For example, say a maintenance technician performs a routine inspection on a piece of equipment and finds a leaking pipe in the same area. The technician will then perform corrective maintenance on the pipe as well, even though the initial inspection was related to just the machine.

Other examples of corrective maintenance may be:

• Emergency repairs
• Service outages
• Quality assurance measures

Corrective maintenance tasks may even arise from PM-associated work orders. 

Pros

Benefits of corrective maintenance include: 

• Increasing the lifespan of equipment
• Not requiring advance planning
• Cost-effectiveness, especially when it is implemented with a solid PM program
• Quick diagnosis and correction of threats to employee safety, organization property, and public opinion

Cons

Disadvantages of corrective maintenance include:

• May be expensive to keep up over the long term
• Labor intensive due to constant maintenance tasks
• Only used in emergency scenarios (challenging to see ROI)
• Higher chance of breakdowns
• Significant consequences if performed poorly or inadequately

Which Is Better — Preventive vs. Corrective Maintenance?

Both preventive and corrective maintenance are essential maintenance strategies. 

However, considering the advantages and disadvantages of each, the one that is most suitable for your facility may depend on a variety of factors, such as:

• Facility size: Larger facilities may have more assets that will need to be maintained and tracked. 
• Number of critical assets: Facilities with many critical assets may benefit more from preventive maintenance, whereas preventive maintenance may be a waste for other facilities with a smaller number of assets. 
• Impact of critical failure on operations: If breakdowns would be incredibly detrimental to operations, preventive maintenance would be better because it intercepts potentially catastrophic issues before they happen.  
• Available resources: Corrective maintenance requires fewer resources to conduct than preventive maintenance. The more resources you have, the more impactful your PM activities will be. If you do not have enough resources like labor, budget, or maintenance equipment, corrective maintenance may better suit your organization. 

Whichever maintenance method you choose, UpKeep’s CMMS may be highly beneficial for your facility. 

Our mobile-first solution makes it easy to:

• Manage multi-location, day-to-day maintenance life cycles.
• Optimize asset utilization.
• Gain insights into real-time performance data.
• Employ an ecosystem approach.
• Bridge the gaps between maintenance, reliability, and operations.
• Be intuitive for every employee to use.

Your assets are invaluable to your operations. With UpKeep's remarkable maintenance management capabilities, you can preserve your equipment’s health, extend its lifespan, and enhance its performance. 

How To Implement the Best Maintenance Practices With UpKeep’s Innovative CMMS

While preventive and corrective maintenance have differences, both may be implemented successfully to care for your facility's capital. 

UpKeep can be applied to enhance your maintenance program’s efficacy. 

With UpKeep’s innovative CMMS, you can:

• Reduce maintenance response time.
• Streamline communication with unlimited free requesters.
• Decrease equipment and asset downtime by up to 26%.
• Ensure consistent cost records.
• Extend your asset and equipment lifetime by up to 11%.
• Achieve up to 652% ROI by integrating UpKeep into your workflow.

Keeping up with your assets may be difficult without the right tool. Preserve your assets and quickly react to equipment issues with UpKeep.

Learn more or schedule a free demo today.