The manufacturer’s guide to preventive maintenance

Production is priority number one for manufacturers. But what happens when production is threatened.

Downtime is a looming threat to all manufacturers. It’s expensive, time-consuming, and disruptive to the bottom line. And while downtime is decreasing (25 incidents a month in 2024, compared to 42 in 2019), the only way to eliminate it altogether is to prevent it from happening in the first place.

In this guide,  you’ll learn the basics of preventive maintenance in manufacturing: what it is, how it works, how to set it up, and how to ensure its continued success.

Key takeaways

• Preventive maintenance significantly reduces unplanned manufacturing downtime (up to 32%), saving production and reducing costs. 
• Successful PM programs combine time-based, usage-based, and condition-based approaches tailored to manufacturing environments.
• Mobile-first CMMS platforms enable real-time PM execution and data collection on the factory floor.

What is preventive maintenance in manufacturing?

Downtime is a threat to any industrial facility. For a manufacturer, it can be disastrous. 

Having production equipment running as much and as effectively as possible is essential for manufacturers who have orders to fulfill, quotas to hit, and customers to please. Downtime jeopardizes that level of machine availability. Downtime is also extremely costly, hitting manufacturers’ bottom lines where it hurts. 

To avoid downtime, many manufacturers turn to preventive maintenance. Preventive maintenance refers to any scheduled inspections, cleanings, lubrications, or routine parts replacements (often referred to as PMs for shorthand) that are performed in an effort to proactively avoid downtime. In a manufacturing setting, preventive maintenance is often performed on critical production equipment, like conveyors or motors.

For manufacturers practicing preventive maintenance, the entire maintenance strategy revolves around timing preventive maintenance tasks to maximize production, optimize operational excellence, and minimize downtime. 

Benefits of preventive maintenance in manufacturing

Reduces unplanned downtime: As opposed to reactive maintenance, where work is only performed when a machine fails or breaks down, preventive maintenance aims to avoid downtime altogether by performing routine maintenance. This is ideal for a manufacturing setting, where any uptime lost is costly.

Lowers maintenance costs: Reactive maintenance is expensive. When a machine breaks down, it often results in emergency shipping costs and overtime/contractor fees for repairs (not to mention lost revenue due to downtime). Preventive maintenance lowers these costs—and makes existing costs more predictable—by building parts replacements, repairs, and inspections into the maintenance strategy.

Extends asset lifespan: Running a machine to failure is hard on the machines in question. While a reactive strategy increases wear and tear, a preventive maintenance strategy extends asset life by promoting a culture of proactive care, careful inspections, and standardized processes that emphasize and extend asset health.

Improves product quality. Many defects and product anomalies can be avoided with routine inspections and maintenance. The more you know what’s going on with your machines, the better you can avoid changes that affect product quality. 

Consistent production throughput. Manufacturers have aggressive throughput targets to hit, and reactive maintenance inherently puts those targets at risk. Preventive maintenance helps keep throughput consistent by minimizing interruptions and breakdowns.

Reduced waste. A malfunctioning machine can create product defects, which creates unnecessary waste. Preventive maintenance ensures defects (and waste) are kept to a minimum. 

Better regulatory compliance. Manufacturers are often held to strict product and production guidelines. Preventive maintenance helps stay compliant by encouraging manufacturers to track all inspections and work done.

Types of preventive maintenance in manufacturing

Depending on your level of access to asset history, failure data, and a work order management system, there are many types of preventive maintenance that you can explore as a manufacturer. As you gain data and insights, you can mature your program to be more precise and sophisticated.

Time-based maintenance

Time-based maintenance (sometimes called periodic maintenance) is a great place to dip your toes into preventive maintenance. Under this strategy, maintenance is performed on critical manufacturing equipment at predetermined, scheduled intervals. Intervals are either chosen based on OEM manuals and guidelines or by using past failure data to predict when the next failure may occur. 

Example: A bearing is lubricated once a week to prevent unnecessary wear. 

Usage-based maintenance

Under a usage-based maintenance strategy, PMs are scheduled for when an asset’s usage reaches a certain point. This is a more advanced preventive maintenance method than time-based, since it uses meter/runtime data to schedule maintenance on high-utilization assets.

Example: A press brake’s air filter is inspected and cleaned after 500 operating hours.

Condition-based maintenance

With condition-based maintenance, machine sensors are installed to measure vibration, temperature, and other indicators to predict when maintenance should take place. While this strategy requires more investment than a usage-based maintenance strategy (machine sensors are their own investment), it’s also much more accurate at detecting early signs of wear.

Example: A vibration sensor is added to a robotic arm and creates an automated alert any time it detects a significant change in gears and rotating components. 

Predictive maintenance

Predictive maintenance uses a combination of AI and IIoT systems (machine sensors) to try to predict when a machine will fail and intervene with maintenance at the optimal time. 

Example: A manufacturing facility uses vibration and temperature readings as well as AI insights to predict when the hydraulic pump of an injection molding machine needs maintenance.

How to create a preventive maintenance program for manufacturing

Step 1: Complete an asset inventory

Before you start creating PMs, you need to know which assets you’ll be creating them for. For each asset in your facility, record the following in a spreadsheet or within your CMMS:

• Name and type of the asset (ex. mixer, machinery)
• Location within the facility (ex. processing)
• Manufacturer and model number
• Installation or purchase date
• Warranty status (active or lapsed)
• Maintenance history
• Current condition or inspection status
• Attachments (manuals, specs, diagrams)

Step 2: Prioritize critical assets

Just because you have a record of every machine in your facility doesn’t mean you should build a PM schedule for all of them at once. Instead, use that inventory as a starting point for prioritizing each asset by criticality. 

By completing an asset criticality assessment, you can rank each asset by a few different criteria: how often it fails, its impact on safety and production, its downtime cost, and its lead time. 

Having a score for each asset will help you apply the 80/20 rule. This rule assumes that 20% of a manufacturing facility’s assets account for 80% of failures (and thus should be prioritized first). Once you’ve designated which assets fall into that 20%, you can move on to the next step.

Step 3: Develop tasks for your most critical assets

Now it’s time to choose maintenance triggers and a PM schedule for your critical assets. 

In a manufacturing setting, your triggers could be based on operator input, run-time, number of cycles, or throughput. Past failure data is a great guide for setting up triggers. For example, if a machine fails on average every 11,000 units produced, you can start with a PM to lubricate it after every 10,000 units produced. 

If you lack historical data, you can always refer to machine manuals or industry benchmarks to set up your initial triggers. Remember, a PM schedule is not static. The more data you collect over time, the more you can refine your PMs to hit at the optimal time. 

Step 4: Create a PM schedule

Now comes the fun part: creating your PM schedule. Ideally, this is done with a mobile CMMS so that you can set and automate recurring work orders, assign them to specific technicians, attach detailed procedures to each PM, track completion status, and keep track of parts consumed.

With a CMMS, you can keep a close eye on the success of your PM program over time. If, for example, your PM completion rate is struggling, it may be time to increase training or audit your PMs to remove unnecessary tasks.

What makes a manufacturing PM program successful 

Simply setting up a preventive maintenance program doesn’t guarantee its success. Every manufacturing team needs the right resources and team structure in place to make an impact with preventive maintenance. 

Make sure your technicians are properly trained so that they understand the importance of a preventive maintenance strategy, their role within it, and the tools they need to help it succeed. 

Finally, remember a successful preventive maintenance program is one that fits nicely within existing systems. If your production workflows are constantly getting in the way of PM tasks (or vice versa), your PMs will get pushed to the side. 

Technology solutions for manufacturing preventive maintenance

Many preventive maintenance programs fail because they’re not supported by the right technology. 

If you’re trying to keep up a maintenance schedule using only Excel, for example, it’s hard to enforce task completion, see which technicians did work at which times, and how many tasks are outstanding. On the other hand, certain technologies make it much easier to run a preventive maintenance program:

• A mobile-first CMMS designed for manufacturing environments will help you create, automate, and monitor a PM program over time. A CMMS that allows technicians to create voice memos, take photos and attach them to notes, and work offline, will help strengthen adoption.
• AI-powered scheduling and task optimization technology is a great add-on for complex manufacturing operations. Rather than leaving all insights to the maintenance manager, AI software (or an AI assistant within your CMMS) can make suggestions for how to streamline your PMs while keeping production needs in mind.
• IoT integration makes condition-based and predictive maintenance possible. When machines are equipped with sensors, any important changes in asset health will generate an automatic work order in your CMMS.

Preventive maintenance success requires effort from everyone

In a manufacturing setting, preventive maintenance is a team effort. Both maintenance workers and operators should be well-trained on the goals, best practices, and needs of your preventive maintenance program. When a preventive maintenance program is done right, it can be a manufacturer’s biggest advantage.

To learn more about how MaintainX can help you implement a manufacturing preventive maintenance program, schedule a free demo today. 

FAQs about preventive maintenance in manufacturing facilities

How do manufacturing maintenance teams balance preventive maintenance with production demands?

A strong preventive maintenance program protects, rather than competes with, production. Production demands are often high for manufacturers, but if they don’t make room for regular PMs, your preventive maintenance program will fail to thrive.