What Is Routine Maintenance

 

The main goal of routine maintenance is to keep assets in good working order and reduce the fear of unexpected breakdowns.

No asset is immune to the wear and tear that comes with regular usage, whether a truck, a building, a machine, or a forklift. Routine maintenance is one method of dealing with equipment degradation before it causes significant problems.

On the other hand, is routine maintenance the best approach to care in general? What are its advantages and disadvantages? How can you get the most out of periodic maintenance?

Continue reading to learn more.

Overview

Routine maintenance jobs are minor and straightforward, requiring just basic maintenance skills to complete. You can do these tasks daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly. Companies who invest in routine maintenance may increase the life of their assets, decrease the need for emergency maintenance, and keep their production lines or facilities working more consistently.

Routine maintenance is a sort of preventative maintenance and an essential component of total productive maintenance. Machine operators undertake minor maintenance chores to improve the dependability of their equipment every day.

The Basics of Routine Maintenance

Routine maintenance (RM) is any maintenance work conducted regularly, and time-based to keep facilities running smoothly. Routine maintenance can range from as essential as ensuring that you fill all restrooms with toilet paper at the end of each day to as tricky as examining and calibrating heavy machinery.

Many ordinary maintenance activities are ideal illustrations of the adage “you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.” For example, functional light bulbs, empty garbage cans, and clean floors are all taken for granted until they’re suddenly not there one morning.

It is generally made up of simple jobs that require little training. As a result, machine operators sometimes perform routine maintenance, freeing maintenance experts to focus on more complicated duties.

By developing a routine maintenance plan, you can guarantee that the day-to-day operations that keep your facility running do not fall between the cracks.

Its Workflow

The routine maintenance process is a cycle that must go through assets designated as suitable for routine maintenance. Once the purchase is placed on a time-based regular maintenance plan, the workflow becomes a closed-loop cycle that repeats throughout its useful life.

Its Attributes

As previously stated, RM is a systematic method for dealing with common equipment faults before they become inconvenient failures. The following characteristics separate routine maintenance from other maintenance strategies:

It is necessary to adopt a proactive approach to care.

You can frequently complete daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual tasks.

The bulk of related jobs center on predetermined periods (e.g., You must service your asset 100 every 72 hours of run time and 101 every 15 days).

A yearly operating budget supports its operations.

Examples

Here are some maintenance tasks that we can classify under routine maintenance:

• equipment inspections
• simple maintenance tasks regularly like lubrication, filter changes, parts replacements, etc.
• cleaning related tasks (washing windows, mopping the floor, mowing the lawn, cleaning equipment, etc.; which are more pronounced in property maintenance)
• testing safety equipment

Of course, it is not a definitive list. These are just a few examples to get a better idea of what routine maintenance covers.

Furthermore, routine maintenance is essential for running any facility, although it can look very different depending on the sector and workspace.

We’ve included some samples of what routine maintenance may look like in various companies.

Manufacturing

While manufacturing facilities require daily maintenance, most of their everyday chores keep equipment and assets in good working order. Daily maintenance is essential to ensuring that all employees feel secure and comfortable at work.

Manufacturing-specific regular maintenance chores are generally concerned with heavy machinery and keeping it in good shape. Cleaning dirt and excess lubricant equipment, sharpening cutting blades, and following safety regulations and protocols are just a few examples of routine maintenance chores that you should regularly conduct in manufacturing plants.

A repair and replacement routine maintenance approach is also beneficial to manufacturing businesses. It enables teams to quickly determine if it’s worth the time and effort to regularly repair and check an asset or whether it’s better to invest in a new one.

Property Management

The number of facilities you must maintain, and the distance between them is one of the most challenging parts of property management. A solid routine maintenance schedule, on the other hand, may make scheduling these chores simple.

Property managers’ routine maintenance plans are primarily concerned with grounds management and building care. It might include shoveling and icing pathways in the winter, completing seasonal HVAC maintenance, and ensuring communal areas are clean and well-maintained.

Schools

They divided routine maintenance into everyday upkeep and easy inspection and maintenance duties in schools. The majority of daily maintenance consists of cleaning activities. It includes replacing garbage can liners, keeping restrooms clean and supplied with toilet paper, and cleaning the floors.

Simple inspection and maintenance duties may include checking that all lightbulbs are operational and replacing broken bulbs. Simple activities also include regularly checking on out-of-sight equipment, such as a water heater or HVAC system, to verify everything is in working order.

Types of Routine Maintenance

They designed routine maintenance operations to avoid malfunctions and extend the life of the equipment. Here are its four types of classification:

Failure-Finding Maintenance (FFM)

FFM seeks to find hidden flaws in a piece of equipment. We commonly see it on assets that perform protective duties, such as safety valves. The FFM avoids safety equipment shutdowns, safety dangers, and emergency scenarios.

We can commonly see it on assets that perform protective duties, such as safety valves. FFM carry out to avoid safety equipment shutdowns, safety dangers, and emergency scenarios.

Time-Based Maintenance (TBM)

TBM stresses replacing parts at predetermined intervals, periods, or the use of indicators regardless of condition. It is typically used for assets with distinct service lines when failure is age-related. According to Efficient Plant Mag, fewer than 20% of failure mechanisms are age-related.

Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM)

CBM entails continuously monitoring assets for signs of impending breakdowns and taking appropriate action to maintain uptime. When you identify issues that require attention, you must assign work orders.

Risk-Based Maintenance (RBM)

RBM emphasizes preventative maintenance on high-risk assets. To calculate risk levels, they use the possibility of equipment failure and the severity of its related repercussions.

Advantages of Routine Maintenance

Routine maintenance involves a proactive approach to failure prevention and downtime reduction. It provides the following advantages when performed:

Reduces Downtime

Assets that are examined and regularly maintained routinely outperform those that are disregarded. Reduced downtime translates to longer equipment lifespans, fewer inconveniences, and higher efficiency.

Minimizes Reactive Maintenance

Taking a proactive approach to maintenance decreases the odds of dealing with expensive, time-consuming, and often hazardous problems after they occur.

Engages All Employees

Because routine maintenance does not often need specific maintenance abilities, any team member may assist.

Improves Productivity

Consistently high-performing equipment leads to improved productivity, which translates to more profitability.

This form of maintenance has no downsides if well planned. Organizations that care for critical assets will only benefit from a proactive strategy.

Routine Maintenance VS. Preventive Maintenance

Many individuals mix the phrases routine maintenance and preventative maintenance. While they share many similarities, a few significant characteristics distinguish them.

• RM: Occurs on a regular time basis (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly)
  PM: Prompted by predefined time-based (daily, weekly, etc.) or meter-based intervals (every X widget produced using manufacturing machines)
• RM: The primary priority is to maintain the plant operational.
  PM: The primary purpose is to avoid equipment malfunctions and downtime.
• RM: An example would be inspecting a piece of industrial machinery to confirm that it is still operational.
  PM: For example, doing maintenance on a piece of industrial machinery to ensure it remains in good working order to provide high-quality output.
• RM: The tasks are pretty straightforward and are related to general upkeep.
  PM: Tasks are more complicated and may need professional training to do.

How To Begin with RM

One of the most excellent aspects of routine maintenance is how simple it is to get started. Growing your regular maintenance plan to meet the demands of your facility completely will take time and money. Still, you may perform the primary stages nearly immediately and at no expense.

Here are the three most effective methods for getting started with routine maintenance.

Use Maintenance Checklists

Checklists are the core of every successful routine maintenance plan, and they happen to be free. Consistency is the key to good regular maintenance. Checklists guarantee that everyday maintenance chores are completed consistently across all personnel and that they will not miss any jobs.

Even if the list is made up of things that your team already does, the physical act of crossing items off a list holds your team responsible, ensuring that nothing falls through the gaps.

To assist you in getting started as quickly as possible, we’ve compiled a selection of facilities management checklists and preventative maintenance checklists that are free to download.

Make a Schedule

Schedules are fantastic. They, like checklists, are free tools that may help you dramatically boost the efficiency of your facility. Set aside time each day for your team to go over the checklist items and perform maintenance requests and other day-to-day duties.

However, just make sure you leave extra time for any unexpected maintenance needs.

Evaluate how frequently basic maintenance chores do not need to conduct every day that you should complete. Furthermore, create checklists on a weekly, monthly, or semi-annual basis.

Hold Your Team Accountable

Feel free to further assign specific tasks to your team members on your maintenance calendar.

Delegating work to a technician and arranging it into their day is the most effective strategy to guarantee that your facility’s normal maintenance activities are always given the attention they require.

How to Get the Most Out of Routine Maintenance

Routine maintenance delivers a great return on investment due to fewer emergency work orders, better equipment efficiency, and fewer equipment replacement needs.

To optimize its advantages of it, offer maintenance professionals training and information on how to clean, inspect, lubricate, service, and modify equipment, components, or systems. Create also a thorough checklist for each piece of equipment or machinery that requires routine maintenance. Investigate the industry standard for lubricating, replacing, or cleaning to verify that regular maintenance is suitable.

Routine Maintenance and CMMS Software

If you’re ready to take your facility’s routine maintenance to the next level, a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) might be ideal.

You can store all checklists in the cloud using CMMS software, making them available to your team and from any location using a mobile device. You may also digitally assign maintenance chores and set out a time to do them.

CMMS software enables your team to do preventative and predictive maintenance and routine maintenance.

In addition, using a CMMS, you may dive deep into maintenance histories and reports to determine the fundamental reasons for these problems. It is critical since dealing with the problem is generally the easiest part.

If the problem is scheduling and managing maintenance work, you should increase the volume of routine maintenance tasks on that asset. However, if it is controlling spare parts inventory, you should look to define clear preventive maintenance checklists. If it is storing maintenance data, you should ensure that the machine is working correctly, that you can use OEM-approved replacement parts, and those machine operators are sufficiently trained.

Furthermore, to apply the correct answer, you must first accurately identify the problem.

Summary

Routine maintenance is an easy-to-implement and straightforward way to improve overall upkeep. Most significantly, having a routine maintenance system in place frees firms to focus on more advanced maintenance tactics such as preventative maintenance and predictive maintenance.