Preventive maintenance is scheduled, proactive maintenance performed on equipment and systems to prevent breakdowns and safety hazards before they occur, rather than repairing equipment only after it fails.
Scheduled, proactive maintenance performed on equipment and systems to prevent breakdowns, malfunctions, and safety hazards before they occur, rather than repairing equipment only after it fails. It's a core element of both equipment reliability and hazard prevention programs.
Replacing the belts on a conveyor system on a fixed quarterly schedule — rather than waiting for one to snap — is preventive maintenance that avoids both equipment downtime and the injury risk of a sudden mechanical failure.
Reactive maintenance addresses equipment only after it fails, which is often cheaper in the short term but riskier and more disruptive. Preventive maintenance follows a planned schedule based on time, usage, or condition to catch issues before they cause failure or injury.
Neglected maintenance is linked to hazards like equipment malfunction, electrical faults, mechanical failures involving moving parts, fluid leaks, and structural degradation. Many serious workplace incidents trace back to equipment that was overdue for scheduled maintenance or inspection.
Schedules are usually developed by maintenance or reliability engineers, often based on manufacturer recommendations, equipment criticality, historical failure data, and applicable regulatory requirements. Facilities managers and EHS teams frequently collaborate on schedules for safety-critical equipment.
Condition-based maintenance uses real-time data — vibration, temperature, oil analysis — to trigger maintenance based on actual equipment condition rather than a fixed time interval. It's considered a more advanced form of preventive maintenance that can catch issues a calendar-based schedule might miss.
Several OSHA standards, including those covering machine guarding and powered industrial trucks, effectively require equipment to be maintained in safe operating condition. Documented preventive maintenance records are often the evidence employers use to demonstrate this compliance during an inspection.
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