A complete guide to preventative maintenance for the Field Service Industry

According to maintenance professionals, two of the top causes of unscheduled equipment downtime are ageing equipment and mechanical failure. Both causes can easily be managed with an effective preventative maintenance plan. Unfortunately, this type of maintenance is not always prioritised, despite its benefits.

To understand what preventative maintenance is and why it's essential for companies that use assets, including those in the Field Service Industry, take a look at our complete guide to preventative maintenance.

What is preventative maintenance?

Preventative maintenance is a company's efforts to repair, service, and maintain its assets regularly to prevent downtime and breakdowns. It's a proactive approach to maintenance, as assets are routinely inspected and repaired before it’s too late to recover a machine or piece of equipment.

Advantages of preventative maintenance

When a preventative maintenance plan is adopted, you can reduce the possibility of downtime and avoid low productivity. Preventative maintenance can decrease downtime as it increases the life expectancy of your assets. You can identify problems and find solutions before it's too late. A higher life expectancy also reduces the need to replace assets sooner rather than later. Less downtime increases asset availability, keeping your business operational and ensuring your mobile workers have all the tools they need to complete their tasks.

Preventative maintenance also creates a safer work environment for your technicians, as regular maintenance and repairs keep your machines and equipment in working order. With regular maintenance, you can determine if machines have become unsafe to use to avoid injuries. If your workers feel safe at work, they'll be motivated to work hard and increase their productivity in the field.  

You can cut expenses with an effective preventative maintenance plan, as your assets won't need to be replaced as often and expensive emergency repairs won’t need to be done frequently. Downtime can also be costly for a company, as your employees can’t work when assets are out of action. In the long run, preventative maintenance is an economical solution.

Creating a preventative maintenance plan

To create an effective preventative maintenance strategy, make a list of all your assets, and then identify the ones that need to be included in your plan. When selecting the equipment and machines to be included, consider the following: the cost to replace the asset if it fails, the importance of the asset for the success of your business, and how often maintenance is required for the asset.

Once you've created the list, identify the maintenance tasks that need to be completed and how often maintenance needs to be done for every asset. The intervals for maintenance will help you create a preventative maintenance schedule and confirm the cost of maintenance. After you've completed these steps, you'll be able to develop a practical preventative maintenance plan. This strategy will help you plan your other jobs, as you will know when assets aren't available for tasks.

The final step is to monitor your preventative maintenance plan. Assess the results of the programme and make changes to optimise maintenance. To measure the success of the plan, confirm the number of breakdowns you’ve had, if maintenance jobs were completed on time, whether extra maintenance jobs needed to be done or not and if you’ve had to replace any assets. Compare this information with your statistics for the time before you implemented preventative maintenance to see how successful the plan has been.

Implement preventative maintenance with Asset Management Software

The most popular management system for maintenance is a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS), making Asset Management Software a logical choice for implementing preventative maintenance. With an Asset Management system, you can schedule maintenance jobs, assign assets to job cards, attach files and certificates to assets and keep an accurate record of asset maintenance. While an effective plan is essential for preventative maintenance, a system that can help you manage and monitor your maintenance jobs will guarantee successful implementation.