Every successful business owner knows that working to prevent a crisis is better than managing it. Businesses take great pains to predict and plan for future goals and challenges. However, most business owners fail to apply the same policy when it comes to managing their equipment. According to CISCO’s former CEO, 40% of businesses will not survive the next 10 years. What this means is that businesses looking to succeed must do better in every sphere – including their equipment maintenance. If your business is dependent on its equipment for day to day operations then it is important to have that equipment in order. Preventive maintenance can save businesses from unscheduled equipment breakdowns and performance hiccups. This article details the benefits of preventive maintenance and how preventive maintenance software can help businesses execute an effective maintenance plan.
What is Preventive Maintenance?
Preventive maintenance focuses on conducting regular maintenance practices to decrease the probability of equipment breakdowns and improve the performance of equipment. Reactive maintenance, on the other hand, relies solely on after-the-fact maintenance i.e. take action once the equipment has already broken down. Businesses can save up to 50% of their spending on maintenance by simply changing their reactive maintenance strategy. The best maintenance plans should focus on both a combination of preventive and reactive maintenance.
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Here are 4 ways in which preventive maintenance can help you save costs.
Increase Equipment Uptime
It is often the more valuable and vital machinery that causes the most disruption to routine operations. A slight lag in performance or the shutdown of such equipment affects the entire workflow. Sometimes equipment breakdowns halt operations altogether. Such interruptions lead to lower productivity, expensive repair costs and delay in project completion time.
Consistently, performing maintenance checks on equipment allows for early detection of potentially dangerous and costly faults. This protects equipment from sudden breakdowns and ensures that equipment continuously performs at its best. Thus, ensuring that operations run smoothly and equipment downtime is considerably reduced.
Increase Reliability
Performing systematic inspections and corrections of equipment faults before they occur or develop into major defects reduces the risks of sudden malfunctions. This, in turn, increase the reliability and safety of equipment. An equipment failure delays project completion timelines and leads to customer dissatisfaction. Consistent equipment failures may damage a company’s reputation and push away existing and future business. Therefore, maintenance management is key to building trust and safeguarding your businesses reputation.
Increase Asset Longevity and Performance
Neglecting equipment can lead to faster degradation of equipment, leading to the premature replacement of assets. Preventive maintenance takes measures to ensure that equipment is regularly maintained for e.g. lubrication is properly done and parts replaced. These simple maintenance measures like oil change and lubrication can prevent unnecessary wear and tear of equipment. Thereby, enabling equipment to perform at its best and save on energy. Additionally, equipment lifetime is also increased, saving businesses the cost of having to replace equipment prematurely.
Reduce Maintenance Costs
We have already seen how preventive maintenance can increase asset lifetime and avoid more large-scale repairs. Businesses assume that having to hire labor for constant maintenance checks is more costly than hiring someone to perform a fix. However, it is the regular maintenance checks that save costs in the long run as labor costs are considerably inflated. In fact, preventive maintenance can save costs by 12 to 18% over reactive maintenance.
Additionally, by decreasing the instances of sudden equipment failure businesses reduce project delays, shutdowns, and costs. This is because sudden equipment failures often meet businesses when they are unprepared and hence distract from ongoing projects and demand more time and money to fix.
How does Preventive Maintenance Management Software help?
Preventive maintenance software is an excellent way to manage the upkeep of multitude of equipment within businesses. By scheduling recurring services and tracking equipment needs, the software enables businesses to plan for regular and required service events. Not only does the equipment management software notify you when service events need to be taken care of but it also allows you to send your items to service and maintenance states. By sending your items to service, you can assign them to specific maintenance personnel and follow up on their progress. Moreover, you can provide the manuals, safety information, technical documents and equipment records needed to perform the service.
Conclusion
Reactive or after-the-fact maintenance reduces productivity, delays project completion time, increases uncertainty and risks, and inflates maintenance costs. Contrastively, preventive maintenance offers greater equipment reliability, higher uptime, performance and longer lifetime. It also reduces maintenance and repair costs in the long run. Equipment maintenance software allows businesses to implement effective preventive maintenance management solutions. The preventive maintenance management software tracks, schedules, and documents all service events and ensures it meets the needs of countless assets used within an organization.
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