How to Set Up a Preventative Maintenance Schedule - Best Practices

Learn the Best Practices on how ho set up a Preventative Maintenance Schedule for your Fixed Assets, either you're using a Maintenance Schedule Software or not.

One of the worst things that can happen to your business pertains to maintenance and scheduling. Too often, work will stop because a certain part is missing, or because a crew member is unsure how to complete a task.

The growing backlog of work can become a worrying sight. It can also cause delayed repairs which will eventually lead to equipment failures that could have been prevented if the maintenance planning checklist and scheduling were solidified and followed. 

How Maintenance Scheduling Helps?

Abiding to maintenance planning and scheduling will help solve plenty of problems for a business. These problems may even stretch out to different areas of business, including inventory, delivery, and equipment quality control checks.

Setting up a maintenance schedule for your business will therefore help you make timely diagnoses and plan the work order. 

Planning the Work Order

It is essential to document everything in the work order. Materials are ordered and when they arrive on sight, they need to go through instance inspection and execution. The scheduler then needs to include each worker’s maintenance job in the schedule.

Based on the assigned priorities, businesses need to draft out a weekly schedule. This is followed by the act of grouping work according to the maintenance of each equipment. This ensures that maintenance and repair follows a systematic approach, free of delays and unwanted outcomes. 

Preventative maintenance Checklist  

Many businesses use some sort of CMMS software to have preventive maintenance features that enable them to methodically plan their maintenance scheduling. A maintenance checklist helps companies become efficient and develop a full-proof system for their routinely checks.

According to a plant engineering survey, a large percentage of representatives prefer to have preventive maintenance.

A checklist breaks down the maintenance procedures according to asset components. This makes it a little easier for businesses to manage their valuable equipment. It allows you to first spot the asset that you want to run and have a long uptime. 

This lets workers repair and restore in a systematic manner as opposed to approaching a task as random. Ultimately, this is a list that tells workers about the groups of machines and parts to check. This detail can be relating many different aspects depending on the assets. 

Why Companies Need a Maintenance Schedule?

Having a well-thought out maintenance schedule will lead to improved safety within a business. This is because a well maintained machine will malfunction less often and help create a safer environment for the work staff.

It will also lead to higher productivity because timely maintenance will improve longevity and increase running time as well.

Increased longevity will come from eliminating faults before they can appear. You also have faster troubleshooting which results in a maintenance workflow that streamlines overtime. A schedule will overall help you achieve a complete maintenance plan according to the time and resource that you have. 

Creating a Equipment Maintenance Schedule 

If you want to formulate an effective schedule, you have to start by creating a list of assets that require preventive maintenance. First, you have to begin by analyzing all your assets and equipment and have them listed. Having a list will provide you a head start when it comes to creating a schedule. If you are a larger facility or you have multiple businesses, the importance of a list increases. 

You can use resources that you already have to get some help in setting up a maintenance checklist. You also have to single out the equipment and assets are in most need of maintenance when creating the schedule. You can also develop numerous methods for different assets. 

The more you can list different variables within a particular asset, the better you will be with the preventative maintenance schedule. Using the help of technology such as CMMS software will help keep track of all the equipment that need maintenance, along with their progress.  

Gathering OEM Manuals 

You cannot create maintenance schedule if you have not gathered the OEM manual. The OEM refers to the original equipment manual. Companies that manufacture equipment will also create an OEM manual alongside it which has all the information you need to maintain the technical asset. You do not necessarily need an OEM manual for every single asset, however, it helps to have as many as possible. 

An OEM manual has all the different details which help you set up proper preventative maintenance tasks and understand how to use PM with your assets. It depends on how far you want to take your preventive maintenance. If you want to go through all the different variables that it takes to maintain all the equipment, then you will have to spend plenty of time. 

This means that this function will have you look at opportunity costs. You have to make sure that you are taking care of the variables that matter the most and start there. You have to then work your way down to the variables and other parts of your assets that do not matter as much.

Review Historical Equipment Data 

Each component of an equipment undergoes unique changes and display trends over a period of time. This is usually a cause of frequent damages and technical shortcomings that equipment undergoes.

Moreover, it also happens due to the third party spare parts and jerry rigging of machines. Equipment and other fixed assets can also experience the usual wear and tear that requires replacements. 

At this point, you need to employ predictive maintenance strategies that give you an idea of how you can maintain the asset going forward. This will require you to check maintenance logs to get an idea of how the machine works for a long time. For this, you need to make sure that you have a checklist for the maintenance duty. 

Key Components of an Equipment Maintenance Checklist 

A standard maintenance checklist consists of preparation information, details of tools that you need to carry out the task, along with safety information.  Safety guidelines and recommendations are also key when trying to complete the maintenance task. 

You also have visual aids that include pictures, videos, diagrams and blueprints of augmented reality setups that show how to perform repairs efficiently. A report found that preventative maintenance reduces equipment downtime by 30 to 50%. 

This is a huge amount and very crazy amount when you consider how much it may be saving companies in terms of cost when it comes to downtime. These numbers can reach billions of dollars. 

Qualities of an Equipment Maintenance Schedule

An ideal maintenance schedule is one communicates clearly and concisely. An overly complex schedule will lead to confusion and extend the time required to complete maintenance task.

Additionally, when creating the schedule, you have to be aware of who will be following the schedule that you create. You also have to be careful in creating sequential steps which helps develop a step-by-step checklist that standardizes maintenance timings, checks and procedures.  

Concluding Thoughts

Overall, an effective maintenance schedule will help prevent maintenance overlap. An updated schedule needs to be updated regularly to optimize the process and implement any new procedures in a timely fashion.

Good scheduling also leads to more work productivity and allows you to liquidate backlog that has been piling up for years. With the help of an equipment or asset management solution like Itefy, you can efficiently set up an effective maintenance schedule.