5 Preventive Maintenance SOPs You and Your Business Should Know

Preventive maintenance, without a doubt, is a very crucial factor to ensuring your business’ success. It is vital to reducing equipment downtime, and improving the lifespan and efficiency of your equipment, all while keeping your workplace safe and your expenses at bay. 

In an environment where one can experience workplace accidents or unexpected outages, having a defined and clear maintenance plan is of utmost importance. With that, in this article we will explore what exactly preventive maintenance is and preventive maintenance SOPs your business should implement.

What is Preventive Maintenance SOP?

Preventive maintenance is the process of taking precautionary measures to prevent accidents or equipment failures from occurring. Regular equipment inspections, cleaning, lubricating, and tidying up your workplace are all examples of preventive maintenance. 

This is done not only to prevent accidents or failure of equipment, but also to reduce the risk of possible accidents. By taking the extra step of prevention, you not only secure your assets but also improve the work situation of your employees. Whether that’s by providing an extra safe work environment or by improving their work through their enhanced equipment.

There are several types of preventive maintenance such as:

• Time-based maintenance - maintenance based on schedule to ensure your equipment is checked and maintained regularly
• Usage-based maintenance - maintenance for machinery or equipment being used extensively every single day
• Predictive maintenance - maintenance that relies on sensors to capture information on equipment (generally specific to work order machines)
• Prescriptive maintenance - similar to predictive maintenance, uses advanced analytics and AI to generate predictions regarding maintenance and makes recommendations to improve performance

Benefits of Preventive Maintenance

While it is obvious that predictive maintenance is beneficial because of risk management, there are more specific benefits as well:

• Reduces unexpected equipment failure that results in business downtime and closures 
• Less expense and increased equipment life expectancy
• Eliminates overtime due to unexpected breakdown
• Increased work environment safety
• High operational efficiency resulting in less energy consumption

5 Preventive Maintenance SOPs You Should Know

Now that we understand the importance of preventive maintenance and how it works, it is now vital to understand which SOPs apply to certain situations. 

1. Preventive Maintenance Equipment Inspections

Inspections set days in advance, or calendar-based inspections of equipment is one of the most vital SOPs. These include regular inspections on HVAC units and electrical boxes to ensure equipment will continue to operate properly and not break down. 

2. Clean Equipment Regularly to Minimize Dirt and Dust 

Dirt and dust can be huge factors in the deterioration of your facility equipment, especially mechanical systems. These cause friction which prevent the machines from functioning properly and eventually lead to premature wear and tear. Having uncleaned machinery riddled with dust and dirt can cause these to build up over time and damage important components inside your equipment. These can damage seals, break down cylinder walls. Because of this, regular cleaning is another important preventive maintenance SOP that, no matter how simple, can work wonders.

3. Check Machinery Power to Optimize Energy Efficiency

When it comes to preventive maintenance SOPs, controlling the consumption of energy is another important safety measurement. This not only helps in reduce costs, but it also helps minimize the use of unnecessary energy that helps the environment. With that, it is important to regularly check and optimize assets to minimize overuse or wasting of energy.

4. Repair or Replace Equipment Before It Fails

While it is important to utilize existing assets in your business, it can be counterproductive to keep them in your roster when they’re doing more bad than good. That is why your PMs should monitor and document the health of every machinery you have, to inform when it’s time to make a necessary switch. One specific instance is when, despite regular inspections, one piece of equipment would go over frequent corrective maintenance that deals more cost in the long run. With that, it is easily a strong sign to replace that machine to reduce expenses and prevent further breakdown or failure in the future. 

5. Lubricate Rotating Parts to Prevent Premature Wear

Friction on an operating machine is already proven to cause a lot of harm on a piece of equipment. Because of this, lubrication will ensure critical parts of your machines function problem-free. Regular lubrication will prevent machines from breaking down, and even from affecting associated machinery, that could lead to an entire production shutdown.

Implement Preventive Maintenance Measures with GAEDKeeper!

Protecting your business assets goes hand in hand when running a business. However, it can be a daunting task if you have a lot of machines to check routinely, all on top of taking care of other business matters. Luckily, GAED is prepared to provide the assistance you need to secure preventive maintenance SOPs so you can dedicate your time and resources on other important matters. Protect your business assets and contact GAED today!