Preventive maintenance involves conducting planned, regular upkeep on equipment and machinery, specifically aimed at identifying and mitigating potential problems before they lead to full-scale breakdowns. The core idea is simple: by preventing failures rather than repairing them after the fact, organizations can significantly enhance operational efficiency.
Key Benefits of a Preventive Maintenance Strategy
Implementing preventive maintenance can yield tangible advantages:
- Reduced Downtime & Longer Asset Lifespan: According to Siemens’ report published in 2023, unplanned downtime costs Fortune Global 500 companies almost $1.5 trillion. Preventive Maintenance is therefore essential to shift the strategy towards proactive intervention. It has been noted that companies that adopt preventive maintenance report better Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), and smoother and faster operations.
- Improved Workplace Safety: Even a minor issue in the workplace can become dangerous and lead to life-threatening injuries. This directly translates to a high Safety incidence rate, which is why regular inspections within the preventive maintenance plan are necessary to keep this metric as low as possible. Moreover, OSHA, in a white paper, also stresses that consistent preventive maintenance plans lead to a drastic reduction in work related accidents.
- Higher Productivity: For assets to operate at the highest efficiency, it is crucial to have an effective preventive maintenance program in place. The higher the asset uptime is, the better its Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) will be. Staying on top of the smaller repairs ultimately reduces the need to manage bigger downtimes in the long run.
- Lower Maintenance Costs: The biggest problem with reactive maintenance is that it can often be very costly and time-consuming. With abrupt production stoppages, expensive spare part replacements, increased labor expenses and overtime, and extensive waiting times for repair parts, the only way to save costs is to implement a farsighted preventive maintenance strategy.
Finding the Right Balance
The central challenge in preventive maintenance is finding the appropriate balance between over-maintenance and under-maintenance:
- Too little maintenance (indicative by the increase in repair cost) leads to increasing failure costs due to emergency repairs, downtime, and consequential damage.
- Too much maintenance, however, also causes unnecessary costs from material wear, personnel effort, and production interruptions.
- The right strategy is to find the cost minimum point where the planned and unplanned maintenance are balanced most effectively.
- Similar assets (e.g. pumps, valves) can be grouped based on their performance and function, so that standardized strategies can be defined.
- Some assets have a bigger impact due to failure than others. For such assets, risk assessment plays an important role, especially in cases of safety or environmental risks.
Therefore, optimizing maintenance schedules requires a strategic, data-driven approach that precisely aligns maintenance actions with asset needs, usage patterns, and operational priorities.
Achieving Balance with our CMMS solution
To enable businesses to strike this ideal balance efficiently, osapiens has developed the osapiens HUB for Maintenance (CMMS), a cloud-based computerized maintenance management system designed for operational excellence.
Key functionalities include:
- Asset Management: Comprehensive asset categorization, enabling standardized and simplified maintenance processes across the organization.
- Automated Maintenance Scheduling: Intelligent scheduling systems set maintenance intervals automatically, minimizing manual intervention and administrative overhead.
- Smart Work Orders: Structured templates and dynamic forms standardize maintenance tasks, ensuring consistent quality, compliance, and accurate documentation.
- Real-time Scheduling and Tracking: Visual planning tools allow real-time assignment, monitoring, and adjustment of maintenance activities, improving coordination and reducing administrative burdens.
The osapiens CMMS solution operates within the broader osapiens HUB platform: a scalable, AI-powered ecosystem supporting organizations worldwide in achieving sustainable operational growth through efficiency and transparency in their processes.
Interested in learning more about preventive maintenance through practical insights?
With over ten years of experience in maintenance technology and digital transformation across asset-intensive industries, Daniel Schwarz brings both strategic vision and practical know-how to the conversation. As Co-Founder and Product Leader for the osapiens HUB for Maintenance (CMMS), he has guided countless companies toward more efficient, transparent, and scalable maintenance processes.
In this recorded session, Daniel shares not only proven results from real customer use cases but also gives hands-on demonstrations and concrete tips for implementing preventive maintenance that actually works, no matter the complexity of your operations.
Request the full recording now and see how a modern, digital approach to maintenance can unlock new potential for sustainable growth in your organization.