Preventive Maintenance

This is achieved through scheduled inspections, timely replacement of wear-sensitive parts, and performing minor repairs. By acting proactively with preventive maintenance, you extend the lifespan of equipment and avoid unexpected downtime and high repair costs.

What is preventive maintenance?

Preventive maintenance is regular, planned servicing of equipment to avoid unexpected breakdowns. Preventive maintenance helps extend asset life, improve efficiency, and reduce repair costs. By identifying and fixing issues early, it ensures systems run smoothly and safely, minimizing downtime and maximizing productivity across various industries like manufacturing and transportation.

Periodic maintenance is a specific form of preventive maintenance that takes place at fixed intervals, regardless of the current condition of the system. Think of annual inspections of installations or monthly checks of emergency lighting. This structured approach ensures consistency and helps comply with laws, regulations, and safety standards.

Together, preventive and periodic maintenance in your maintenance strategy ensures reliable systems, increases safety and contributes to long-term cost savings. By planning your scheduled maintenance smartly, your maintenance technicians work more efficiently and manage risks more effectively.

What is the difference between preventive and reactive maintenance?

Reactive maintenance, on the other hand, occurs after a failure has happened. It focuses on fixing problems only when they arise, often leading to unexpected downtime and higher repair costs. While preventive maintenance aims to reduce risks and extend equipment life, reactive maintenance can be more costly and disruptive. The key difference lies in timing: preventive is proactive and scheduled, while reactive is unplanned and responsive to breakdowns or malfunctions. Both have roles in maintenance strategies.

Preventive maintenance examples in a factory

• Regularly lubricating conveyor belts to prevent friction damage and ensure smooth operation.

• Inspecting and replacing worn-out bearings in motors before they fail.

• Cleaning dust from electrical panels to avoid overheating or short circuits.

• Calibrating sensors and machines on a monthly schedule to maintain accuracy and product quality

Reactive maintenance examples in a factory

• Repairing a motor after it suddenly stops during production.

• Fixing a jammed packaging machine that halts the assembly line.

• Replacing a broken sensor after it causes a quality control failure.

• Patching a leaking air compressor only after pressure drops are noticed.

Periodic maintenance in Ultimo

In Ultimo EAM software, you define which maintenance tasks need to be performed, how often, and when. This is done through periodic maintenance models and tasks. You can set up individual maintenance activities that are automatically generated, for example based on time or meter readings. Once a task is generated, the responsible person automatically receives an email notification.

For many similar types of equipment, it is useful to use the Group Periodic Maintenance function. For a single asset, individual maintenance is easier to manage. For multiple assets, a group approach offers greater efficiency.

A clear maintenance planner in Ultimo ensures that all your preventive maintenance tasks are scheduled in a structured and transparent way.

Maintenance Routes: Efficiency in Execution

With maintenance routes, you can create one task for multiple installations. This is ideal for small, recurring tasks such as refilling oil, checking lubrication points, or inspecting moving parts. This way, you can perform multiple small tasks without adding administrative burden to your preventive maintenance regime.

Bulk Periodic Maintenance

Bulk Periodic Maintenance is intended for small assets where it is not known in advance which ones need maintenance. Think of a technician who checks all small installations on-site. Back at the workshop, the checked items are registered and linked to a job. Ultimo then automatically generates a job per asset, ensuring that the administration is accurate at the individual level.

Predictive Maintenance: Condition-Based Maintenance

Predictive maintenance, or condition-based maintenance, goes a step further than preventive maintenance by predicting the right time for maintenance based on measurements and analyses of the actual condition of assets. This prevents unnecessary maintenance and extends the time between service intervals. This approach requires interfaces with, for example, IoT platforms, SCADA systems, or PLCs to collect real-time data such as vibrations, temperature, pressure, or power consumption. We are happy to advise you on this.

Benefits of Condition-Based Maintenance

• Reduced Maintenance Costs. Condition-Based Maintenance helps avoid unnecessary maintenance tasks by only performing maintenance when it's actually needed. This reduces labor, spare parts usage, and downtime compared to scheduled maintenance.

• Increased Equipment Lifespan. By addressing issues before they lead to major failures, Condition-Based Maintenance helps maintain equipment in optimal condition, which can extend its operational life and improve overall reliability.

• Minimized Unplanned Downtime. Condition-Based Maintenance uses real-time data to detect early signs of wear or failure, allowing for timely interventions. This proactive approach significantly reduces the risk of unexpected breakdowns and production interruptions.