There are different types of maintenance that your building needs, like routine maintenance, preventive maintenance, and front-line maintenance. While regular maintenance takes care of minor repairs so that major repairs are not required, front-line maintenance includes repainting a wall or cleaning the windows. On the other hand, preventive maintenance comprises checking the assets for either repair, cleaning, or replacement of parts to ensure that the asset lasts its given lifetime.
While building maintenance includes all three equally important types of maintenance, we are going to talk about preventive maintenance and the best practices for it. We start with a preventive maintenance checklist and then go on to the steps to be followed for a preventive maintenance plan.
How Do You Create a Preventive Maintenance Checklist
You need a checklist before you have a plan of action. For an effective preventive maintenance plan, you need to determine what assets you currently own and their condition.
Here are some ways of creating a comprehensive preventive maintenance checklist:
SWOT Analysis
Like every business needs a SWOT or strength, weakness, opportunity, threat analysis before it can compete, you need a SWOT analysis to check your asset’s status. This will give you a clear idea about the condition of each asset and the gaps in maintenance.
Having a Maintenance Schedule
Now that you know where you stand vis-a-vis your building and its associated assets, you can start setting your maintenance goals. An integral part of achieving your maintenance goals is a maintenance schedule. This will help you find answers to questions like – Are you interested in increasing your productivity or upgrading your present equipment?
Prepare a Draft
The specific action that you need to take for every asset needs to be documented so that maintenance is effective. The language used in the checklist should also be simple so that anyone can understand it. Additionally, all tasks should be explained in steps to ensure there is no error in the sequence.
Take Feedback From Your Staff
When you prepare the checklist, there are likely to be some gaps since you might not have the same insight as your staff. To ensure that your checklist has no loopholes, you will need inputs from your staff. You could also brainstorm with other key maintenance personnel in your company to find out if anything is missing.
Staff Training
After the preventive maintenance checklist is ready, you need to provide your staff with the right guidance and training. A meeting with your staff before the checklist becomes an official document is advisable.
Once the checklist is ready, you need to proceed with creating the preventive maintenance plan. Keep in mind that the preventive maintenance checklist should be flexible for any changes in the work environment or government regulations.
Steps for Building a Preventive Maintenance Plan
The benefit of having a preventive maintenance checklist is that it gives you a starting point for a preventive maintenance plan. Here are the steps you need to follow:
Choosing the Assets:
When you do a SWOT analysis of your assets, you need the ones that need the greatest attention and should be on the priority list of your preventive maintenance plan.
Now, if you are a business owner, you would like to test your maintenance plan with other assets before covering all your assets to evaluate if the investment is worth it.
The questions you need to ask yourself are:
- Can this machine be directly mapped to your organization’s success?
- Does this machine need regular maintenance?
- What are the repair and replacement costs?
This will help you select the machines that need regular maintenance and high replacement, or repair costs, or both. The reason is that you will generate higher savings as with preventive maintenance, you will save on both repairs and replacement. Assets that are at the end of their lifespan should be avoided.
Collect All Information:
After selecting the assets that will be included in your preventive maintenance plan, you will need to identify the specific maintenance tasks they need and their frequency.
You can get the information regarding the assets from the following sources:
- OEM Manuals: The manuals will contain information regarding the periodic maintenance, spare parts to be used, and basic maintenance instructions.
- Maintenance Records: You can check your CMMS or computerized maintenance management system for failures in the asset and the frequency. This will ensure your plan is accurate
- Discuss With Your Maintenance Technicians: Your technicians will provide you with inputs that are not available in your maintenance logs. You might get detailed information regarding when the spare parts should be ordered.
Initial Preventive Maintenance Plan:
Now that you have the data you need for the selected assets, you can create your initial plan using the CMMS tool. Enter the required data into the CMMS tool so that the tasks can be assigned along with their priority and due date. Your entire maintenance team can access this information through the software.
Tracking Your Assets
While preventive maintenance is important, you should not overdo it. With CMMS software, you can track the asset’s failures after the preventive maintenance plan was put in place.
If you find that the asset did not experience any breakdown, then you need to spend less on preventive maintenance. If an asset experienced frequent failures after being placed on the preventive maintenance schedule, then you need to spend more time with it. You should be ready to make adjustments to your preventive maintenance plan if required.
Include Other Assets in Your Plan:
Once you have seen the desired benefits in terms of the ROI of the preventive maintenance plan with one asset, you can repeat the same process for other assets. Your technicians, supervisors, and managers will need some time to adapt to this plan, so you should be prepared for it.
Enjoy Higher Productivity With a Preventive Maintenance Plan
There are a lot of gains you can expect with a preventive maintenance plan. You ensure optimal resource allocation in terms of finances and staff since the time spent on preventive maintenance will depend on the asset’s condition.
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