For facility and operations managers, work order management is a critical part of their jobs. Work order management systems track and manage reactive work orders, preventive maintenance work orders, and asset data. When it comes to asset maintenance, the adage “pay now or pay later” is highly relevant.
Preventive & Reactive Maintenance
Reactive maintenance refers to service after equipment breaks down. Many consider it a band aid since it doesn’t tackle the root cause. Since reactive maintenance often leads to unexpected downtime that requires emergency repair or replacement, it can be expensive.
Preventive maintenance provides scheduled service on equipment, facilities, systems, and other assets based on real-time data insights. Preventive programs can help extend the lifespan of equipment, property, or a facility and improve performance.
With greater reliability, preventive maintenance can also reduce the need and cost for repairs. Uptime also increases and the cost of ownership is reduced.
To be effective, preventive maintenance requires planning and preparation and following a schedule ensures regular inspection and maintenance that prevents small problems from becoming major issues.
Scheduling & Automating Preventive Maintenance
Keep some points in mind as you plan and implement a preventive maintenance schedule:
- Inspect assets regularly at planned intervals.
- Have trained and certified personnel conduct inspections.
- Document each step in a task sequence.
- Regularly assess and revise your schedule.
A good schedule drives preventive planning and budgeting. A great schedule relies on powerful technologies to automate the process:
- CMMS: Computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is an enterprise-level solution that looks at multiple data points associated with your assets. Software includes work order management, asset tracking, and preventive maintenance scheduling that can be customized for mobile access, viewing, and updating.
- EAM: Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) is a type of CMMS software designed specifically for managing equipment assets. EAM supports optimization of asset lifecycles and can be integrated with an organization’s other business systems.
- Predictive Maintenance: Predictive maintenance is a form of preventive maintenance that uses data to predict when an asset will need to be serviced, create usage-based maintenance forecasts, and even determine when an asset is due for replacement. It’s generally very accurate and guided by preventive maintenance software.
- Prescriptive Maintenance: Although similar to predictive maintenance, prescriptive maintenance takes asset data usage to the next level. Through machine learning, predictive analytics, and AI, prescriptive maintenance not only predicts when an asset requires servicing; it prescribes the best way to do so.
Preventive maintenance is just one component of work order management but can reap generous rewards for any organization. Learn more about work order management systems at Facilitron.
