The dictionary definition of maintenance is the act of keeping equipment and machinery in optimum working conditions. Maintenance is highly recommended as a long term strategy to save cost and avoid downtime caused by breakdowns. Below are three main types of maintenance that you should know about.
Preventive Maintenance
This is a planned type of maintenance. Perhaps the most important type of maintenance since it helps prevent partial or complete failure of the equipment. This type of maintenance requires both the effort of the management, the personnel manning/ operating the equipment and the technician. It involves taking into account the equipment’s history and failure patterns. It is essential in service stations where gas station pump repair is often needed.
Predetermined Maintenance
Slightly different from preventive maintenance, this type of maintenance is pre-planned. It is mainly done in accordance with the manufacturer’s guidelines. The guidelines could be stipulated in the equipment’s handbook or communicated by the management in the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). It could include operations such as changing of specific spare parts or draining of oil in the case of engines.
Corrective maintenance
This type of maintenance is undertaken due to failure of equipment. Corrective maintenance is probably the worst type of maintenance any business might want to undertake. This is because corrective maintenance is only done after the partial or complete failure of the equipment. As the name suggests, it is a correction that is done on a machine or machinery that has already broken down. In order to avoid prolonged downtime and loss of sales, it is recommended to have spare parts of components are most likely to fail. Examples of such components are fuses, fan belts and circuit breakers.
Predictive maintenance
This maintenance technique uses sophisticated software to collect data on the machine’s state continuously. The computer then analyzes this data and uses it to predict when the next servicing/ maintenance is due.
Maintenance is crucial in just about any industry. It saves time, significantly reduces downtime and prolongs the lifetime of the equipment.