Must Have Features of Preventive Maintenance Checklist
For organisations having multiple assets, the task of upkeep and maintaining assets for life-cycle optimization needs constant attention. However, gone are the days when companies dragged equipment and machinery repairs until the day they collapsed. According to a report, preventive maintenance is preferred by over 80% of trained professionals dealing with multi-faceted maintenance.
With an asset life cycle optimization strategy with task management software, here is a deep look into the preventive maintenance checklist and how it can give a new direction to enterprise asset maintenance, simply by incorporating this highly lucrative software in your facility.
How do you Define Preventive Maintenance?
Organisations have to deal with multiple assets, including physical and virtual assets, and maintaining them requires a lot of skill and effort. Failure to maintain a particular asset can result in either underperformance or complete breakdown of the equipment and machines that are vital to the functioning of the company.
Preventive maintenance is an approach that considers taking preventive steps a priority, rather than keeping backup and procedures to be followed after the asset has been damaged. It is like saying “Maintain and care for the assets in such a way that they never die out on you”. While preventive maintenance does not ensure that the machinery and tools are never going to get old or damaged, it does decrease the untimely breakdowns and sudden damages and in fact, leads to the longevity of all assets.
What are the Benefits of using a Preventive Maintenance Checklist?
The benefits of using a preventive maintenance checklist are far too many to ignore and therefore, companies are widely turning to this approach in recent years. Read on to know how a great preventive maintenance checklist can take your assets a long way ahead and render countless advantages to the organisation.
High Productivity
Companies, big or small, are well aware of the expenses and time that a failed machine or equipment can cost even if it is down for merely an hour. In most cases, an unplanned breakdown is a result of improper maintenance and ignorance on the part of management or the staff handling the maintenance tasks.
Preventive maintenance is aimed to provide assets with thorough care and routine maintenance that ensures all the equipment, tools and resources used by a company are in the prim state at all times. This, in turn, ensures that the machines are up and running without any failure.
Better Troubleshooting
Having too many assets, companies can find the whole upkeep and maintenance quite overwhelming. It is also necessary to consider the scenario when too many assets suffer a sudden breakdown at the same time, which could lead to companies’ productivity and even profits going down the drain in a daytime.
When a preventive maintenance checklist is at work, the problems of dealing with repairs and management issues become fairly easy to tackle. This is because the list already has the necessary information of the asset or machinery in question and any technician can easily go through the history and performance levels for better troubleshooting decisions.
Higher Safety
Proper upkeep of physical assets is vital to the smooth running of any industry or organisation. With a proper maintenance checklist, companies can keep a close eye on the functioning of all the assets. Continuous inspection of materials, part certification/ licencing, and proper safety compliance make for an integral part of any preventive maintenance program. This step-to-step routine ensures that the safety of the employees, as well as the facility, is never compromised. This list also has safety protocols that need to be followed before entering a particular area with sensitive machinery, helping the management exercise control on the maintenance and management of all the types of assets with a peaceful mind.
Strategic Maintenance
Having an ideal maintenance checklist in hand allows the technicians as well as managers to go through each task listed by the original equipment manufacturer. With enough information and data stored over a time period, the concerned technicians can easily decide which equipment is performing well and which ones need repair or added maintenance. They can then assign time slots and schedule repairs accordingly and not put the whole process to a halt. This approach is far better than just randomly inspecting equipment and setting schedules without proper analysis and insufficient data.
Standardised Tasks
When it comes to Standard Operating Procedures or SOPs, a checklist can save time and extra effort. Every company has a set of SOP’s that need to be followed in a certain way and can vary according to the changing nature of industries. Whatever the protocol, a preventive maintenance checklist ensures that all the tasks are being carried out with safety and the manner that they are assigned by the upper management tier. Having an organised way of handling such tasks introduces consistency in the processes and brings quality control effortlessly to the company.
Reduced Errors
Most companies rely on staff or trained personnel to take care of the standard operating procedures checklist entirely. While trained professionals are a great choice for handling this crucial task, they are, after all, humans. This can lead to human errors like the person going through the list may forget one or two tasks or skip a step or two while taking regular rounds. This eliminates the whole concept of having a checklist and further pushes the equipment towards unexpected damages owing to poor handling measures. With a maintenance checklist software, the scope of human errors is rendered and the whole maintenance routine can be achieved without making any mistake.
High Equipment Life
A major advantage of implementing a preventive maintenance checklist is how the solution helps optimize the asset lifecycle. No asset can last forever and it runs its course of time only to come to an end. However, the machinery that is constantly taken care of by proper procedures like lubrication, oiling, regulated cleaning protocols etc. always goes a long way. Placing scheduled maintenance as a must. The equipment that does not receive proper attention and is neglected for “later repairs” are usually the ones that cause unexpected productivity losses to companies. The organisations that follow the rule of taking proper care of equipment and machines on-site never have to deal with risks of sudden machine breakdown or unplanned shutoffs.
Features of Preventive Maintenance Checklist
All companies have assets but they may differ in variety as well as number. Therefore, it is hard to put out a preventive maintenance checklist that fits all every enterprise. However, there are certain mandatory features that companies should look out when drafting a preventive maintenance checklist for their assets.
Purposeful
A preventive maintenance checklist needs to be created with a purpose. For instance, it is not favourable to create such lists for equipment that are not going to be used in the long run. Instead, opting for assets and machinery that require regular repair for uninterrupted functioning of the associated processes needs to be a priority. Basically, following the checklist and getting tasks done should lead the company towards achieving a particular goal or purpose.
In order to make a great scheduled maintenance list, the following questions could be of great help:
- What are you trying to achieve by creating these tasks?
- Which tasks should be included in such lists?
- Are these steps improving the asset/equipment life?
Concise
Checklists need to be concise. Inserting long paragraphs describing the condition of assets and other data is not an ideal practice to follow while creating a PM checklist. Instead, stick to short descriptions that are easy to read for any person trying to accomplish the task. An important thumb rule to follow while creating an efficient preventive maintenance check is that every big task should be broken and segregated into small tasks. For instance, if there are multiple equipment’s you are dealing with, it can have notes like “check the condenser and the evaporator first”. In short, the list should be such that no one faces difficulty while following it.
Detailed and Informative
Informative and detailed instructions are a must to be included in the list. But it also needs to be concise, you may ask. As detailed doesn’t require the seniors to write a report on every piece of equipment and machine they pass during their inspection. This usually means that the steps need to be concise yet informative and detailed. For example,
- Check the thermostat of the second and third evaporator
- Inspect the fluid level of the fifth column on the hydraulic tank
Even the tiny details should be included while creating a PM checklist so that the maintenance is done right. It is not necessary to state the information for all the equipment but mentioning it for the ones in need, saves a lot of time and effort for any person handling this list.
Tip:
Insert diagrams and flowcharts in the checklist, allowing information to be conveyed in a better manner rather than writing steps and instructions in long sentences
Sequential
An important feature of your PM checklist is that it is sequential. Similar to taking notes or checking to-dos in a daily routine, a preventive maintenance checklist too needs to follow an order. The steps should be written in the exact order that needs to be followed (ideally recommended by the OEM). When there is an order, the list can help companies carry out the task in more organised, with better results and efficiency in the long run.
Time Bound
Most organisations forget to include the time factor in their task management software. This is a common mistake even though the whole point of creating a checklist is better time management in the first place. In order to leverage most of the maintenance checklist, include the time and duration of each step requires,
- Capacitor check to be completed in 5 minutes
- Check the wires and controls to the main electric line in 10 minutes
A list that looks like this is surely better than just mentioning the steps without being time-bound. This helps not only the senior maintenance officers but also the technicians who may have to visit the facility during repair work.
Updated
Maintain an up-to-date log on your enterprise assets. When was the condenser coil last repaired? When was the last oiling of machinery done for a particular process?
For a checklist to be efficient, it is necessary to keep a record of the repairs and breakdown issues related to equipment and keep modifying the details accordingly. This data and information should be updated in the checklist to ensure that there is an accurate record of the assets that have recently been renewed and repaired.
With a checklist, the management can better understand the life of assets and equipment and make informed decisions in the future regarding their maintenance and servicing.
Due to the many benefits offered by this updated approach of asset maintenance, the preventive maintenance checklist is being widely accepted across industries. This not only helps regulate the lifecycle of each equipment but also ensures that your business does not suffer any huge loss or accident with so much heavy machinery at work within the facility. When preventive maintenance is done right, the management can sit back and relax without having to worry about the sudden operational failures or breakdowns that can disrupt the proper workflow of organisations and cost them millions without any warning.