About Preventive Maintenance

Modified on Mon, Sep 16 at 3:26 PM

Preventive maintenance or PM as it is commonly called, is a proactive type of maintenance that is designed to prevent equipment failures and enhance its efficiency and lifespan. By using a regular preventive maintenance schedule, you can minimize asset downtime (and decrease work order costs) as you work to prevent and better prepare for unexpected failures.

Some tasks of preventive maintenance include, but are not limited to, regular:

inspections
cleaning & recalibration (of equipment and meters)
repairs
software updates
replacements
monitoring

This article describes how preventive maintenance relates to other SOMAX modules, such as meters, auto generated work orders, and more.

PM Jobs vs Schedules

PM Master Jobs is the full, comprehensive blueprint that includes information on the maintenance such as:

the work that must be done, such as specific tasks or instructions
the trigger (discussed more below), which can be:
- a regular calendar schedule
- a meter reading
- on demand
the duration

The PM Schedule outlines when the maintenance must be done, and essentially focuses on the job's trigger (discussed more below). Its details depend on and differ based on this trigger, and can include information such as:

frequency of maintenance
calendar slack
asset that the maintenance is performed on

For help with either, see Creating a PM Job or Creating a PM Schedule.

PM Triggers / Types

When creating a new PM Job you will be prompted to select a PM Type. Whatever you select will be the "trigger" and will determine how often you need maintenance - it will also determine what kind of schedule you can input. Let's now discuss the three types: Calendar, Meter, and On Demand.

Calendar

A calendar trigger is based off of how many days or months the PM job was last performed or was last due (if the job is not performed the day it is due). You can choose between these values when you create the schedule.

For example, say you have an air filter that must be inspected or changed every couple months in order to ensure food safety. When creating a calendar based schedule, you would select frequency in months and perform every 2.

Because it is simply a countdown, the calendar based schedules are the most regular and consistent.

For more information on the advantages and disadvantages of calendar triggers, see Calendar Based Maintenance: Last Due vs Last Done.

Meters

A meter is a tool used to assess and monitor equipment health and performance through physical factors, such as temperature, pressure, and electrical currents, or equipment data, such as network traffic, response times, and error rates.

PMs and meters are closely related as preventive maintenance schedules are often based on assets' performance data, which is measured by these meters. For example, if a meter reads that over time the temperature of the asset has risen, a preventive maintenance schedule may be added to consistently monitor and cool the asset.

In other cases, a meter may detect an anomaly or error within the asset's performance that would cause a preventive maintenance job to come in and inspect the asset before a major failure can occur and shut down the line.

Finally, in other cases, preventive maintenance may be done on the meter. In this situation, a preventive maintenance job would regularly inspect and calibrate the meter to ensure it is working properly.

For help with PMs, Meters, and Meter Based Maintenance, see:

On Demand

On Demand schedules are usually used for emergency or unplanned maintenance, and are only on an as-you-need basis, such as plant outages or holidays.

When you schedule on demand, you will be prompted to select an on demand group. These groups are ways to organize all on demand schedules based on asset type, location, what needs to be done, or more., and make the maintenance process faster and more efficient.

For more help with creating on demand groups, see About PM On Demand Groups.

PMs & Auto Generation

You can use preventive maintenance schedules to automatically generate work orders through SOMAX.

The auto generation is based on the frequency of the preventive maintenance, which is set up when creating the schedule.

For help automatically generating these work orders, see Auto Generating Work Orders from PMs.