How Preventive Maintenance Reduces Cost

Preventive maintenance is costly and unnecessary in the eyes of too many business owners. Asset failure is accepted as part of the business and preventative maintenance is deemed too demanding and expensive to invest in. This is a huge illusion and a big mistake. The quality of work from assets that are not correctly maintained gradually decreases. Problems that could easily be solved by small interventions at an early stage, grow and end up causing the asset to breakdown. Adopting a preventive maintenance strategy saves businesses both time and money. In this article, we'll take a closer look at preventative maintenance and how it helps you cut maintenance costs.

What is preventive maintenance?

Preventive maintenance is the maintenance of assets at regular intervals to prevent sudden failures. A correctly implemented preventive maintenance system should include a detailed record of past maintenance and asset equipment information. You should support your preventative maintenance schedule using a CMMS to avoid human error and increase efficiency.

Regardless of the size of your business, it’s vital that your assets function correctly.

Preventive maintenance has three main ways of reducing costs.

Reduced Downtime: Every second that an asset is not fully-functioning equates to loss of revenue. Often, the operator cannot work due to the breakdown so the loss is doubled.

Those companies that have a preventative maintenance system in place have far fewer instances of sudden unexpected downtime.

A CMMS also allows technicians to easily access data about the asset or equipment using a scanning QR code. This provides all information about the asset from the moment of purchase to the breakdown. Any recurring faults can be addressed quickly and wasted time is prevented.

With a preventative maintenance system in place, downtime is planned around the needs of the company. Maintenance can be arranged out of operational hours or during a time when the asset is not in use so productivity rates are kept up.

Increased Asset Life: Regular inspection and early intervention prevents small problems growing into major problems. Left undetected, minor issues with assets can worsen over time and result in a major repair or complete replacement. Both of these scenarios are disruptive, expensive and can hit your bottom line hard.

A preventive maintenance system ensures all assets are regularly inspected and repairs are carried out quickly and easily. All assets are maintained in optimum working order, downtime is reduced and accurate records of all data on each asset are digitally stored for security and easy access.

Preventive maintenance reduces future expenses while increasing the value and prolonging the life of your past investments.

Assets that are properly maintained hold more of their value and have less depreciation at disposal.

Improved Productivity: No business can work to maximum efficiency if its assets are in poor condition. A company that operates with regularly maintained assets will use less energy and resources - which is good for bottom line profit and for their efforts towards corporate social responsibility. Depending on the equipment, regular maintenance may also result in better-quality products.

Conclusion

Preventive maintenance systems come at a cost and can take time to fully implement. But the initial investment will pay for itself in a short time and, in the long run, will increase profits.

But the benefits of a preventative maintenance system are not limited to increased asset efficiency. Digitised maintenance management allows you to manage and track performance of your technicians. When you organise your scheduling and dispatching with the help of a CMMS, you gain an overview of your activities and you can follow up instantly. This increases the efficiency of your future planning.

About Lena MAINT

Lena MAINT is a computerised maintenance management system (CMMS) that allows you to manage all maintenance and repair activities. In addition to giving you full control over your assets and equipment, it also supports working with subcontractors and allows you to manage large-scale projects such as construction and renovation.

You can assign periodic budgets to maintenance types so you can see where your maintenance costs and resource usage are concentrated. This makes it easy to keep track of maintenance expenses and lets you see where there is room for improvement.