While preventive maintenance relies heavily on industry averages and best practices to guide maintenance decisions, preventive maintenance involves using an asset’s actual utilization to decide when to perform maintenance.
With a predictive maintenance strategy, facilities teams use historical and current performance data to determine when a malfunction is likely to occur and then perform maintenance in advance. The other key difference between preventive maintenance and predictive maintenance is technology.
Predictive maintenance requires technology like Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and facility maintenance software to track the true utilization of an asset. IoT sensors should be integrated with facility maintenance software so FMs always have the most up-to-date asset utilization data at their fingertips. They can use this data to inform their maintenance decisions and prevent unexpected asset failures.
How Do You Implement Predictive Maintenance?
Executing a predictive maintenance strategy is slightly more complex than applying preventive maintenance. These three steps can help simplify the process:
- Use IoT sensors to establish baselines for asset performance indicators like temperature, vibration and sound. This information will help you determine the thresholds that indicate an asset could fail soon. You should also take this opportunity to observe how employees interact with these assets to determine if bad habits could be decreasing the lifespan of some equipment.
- Use the dashboards and analytics reports in your facility maintenance software to identify trends and potential problems. For example, if one particular asset consistently malfunctions despite repeated repairs, it could indicate a larger problem. The asset may have been installed correctly or it may not be well-suited for the environmental conditions where it’s located. Once you identify this problem, you can replace the asset instead of wasting money on repeated repairs that don’t last.
- Look for ways to improve your predictive maintenance strategy. As the cost of IoT sensors drops and facilities management technology continues to improve, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to optimize your asset maintenance.
The size of your organization, your available resources and your asset portfolio will help you determine whether to implement preventive or predictive maintenance. No matter which strategy you choose, facility maintenance software is an integral part of streamlining operations and reducing costs