CMMS Insight Blog

What’s in Your Preventative Maintenance Plan?

Oct 8, 2018 10:34:11 AM / by CMMS Insight Staff

Did you know that preventative maintenance can result in up to a 545% return on your investment? Such a return is hard to ignore, especially for businesses who rely on machines and equipment to operate without interruption.

If you haven’t invested in a preventative maintenance plan, you’re missing a prime opportunity to increase your company’s profitability. Maintaining your equipment, even when all appears to be in tip-top shape, can help you avoid costly issues and repairs that eat away at profits.

Setting up a preventative maintenance plan might be easier than you think, and certainly within your capabilities.

Achieving Safety and Maintenance Goals

To get started with a preventative maintenance plan, take a look at last year’s data: How many times did you have to perform maintenance on each machine or piece of equipment? How much did it cost? How many man-hours did these fixes require? How many incidents occurred due to equipment failure or lack of training?

Your preventative maintenance plan should be designed to improve these figures for the coming year. If you noticed an uptick in a particular issue, consider how preventative maintenance might be able to lower that number.

It’s not enough to put preventative practices in place. You must also specify what you hope to get out of your strategy. This way, you’ll have benchmarks and facts to measure the results against to see just how much an ROI your efforts are worth.

Machine Operation and Efficiency

To start a preventative maintenance plan for your equipment, first make a list of each machine and other devices your company relies on for business. Each machine will then require a list of components that may need servicing, as well as technical data and servicing instructions.

You’ll need to decide how often a piece of equipment will require routine maintenance. It’s also helpful to include information on what inspectors should look for when checking the machine for potential issues or wear and tear. Consider including pictures of what specific parts should look like when they’re functioning properly versus what damaged components look like.

Operator Safety

Preventative maintenance isn’t just about preventing damage to machines. You also need to prevent accidents involving your team.

It starts with having the right people on board who will pay attention to workplace safety and training as much as you do. Your plan should include regular training sessions and refresher courses throughout the year to keep safety top of mind. Even seasoned employees can let safety precautions slide if they forget why a certain procedure is performed a certain way.

By performing preventative maintenance, you’re also ensuring each piece of equipment is safe for your workers to use. Minor issues have less chance to become mountainous problems if you can stop them before they cause harm.

How a CMMS Can Simplify Preventative Maintenance

It sounds like a lot of data to manage, and truthfully it is. Many companies rely on Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) software to track tasks and progress. A CMMS software solution can house all your important maintenance-related documents, checklists, training information, and other resources your team members will need.

In addition, a CMMS can help you make the transition from a paper recordkeeping system to a digital one. All maintenance activities, such as inspections, repairs, and inventory logging, can be housed on software that makes it easy to access at any given time, even a decade after a specific activity was performed.

This flexibility is changing how maintenance departments work, giving them quicker answers, better information, and streamlining processes that simply isn’t possible with antiquated methods.

There’s never a bad time to begin a preventative maintenance plan, especially given the potential gains from having one. With the right tools and careful planning, preventative maintenance could become one of your company’s biggest profit centers yet.

Topics: CMMS, Computerized Maintenance Management System, CMMS Software, Preventative Maintenance, Safety Management

Written by CMMS Insight Staff