Prevention is better than cure is the adage which we all know and in the case of some manufacturing companies, they follow a similar principle that is called preventive maintenance. Preventive maintenance as the name suggests refers to that maintenance that is done in advance by the companies so that machines do not break down suddenly leading to the stoppage of production of goods manufactured by the company. In order to understand this concept in a better way, one should look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of preventive maintenance –
Advantages of Preventive Maintenance
No Sudden Disruption
The biggest advantage of preventive maintenance is that is there is no sudden disruption of machines as all possible faults are already corrected due to the company going for preventive maintenance which is not the case with breakdown maintenance where the company waits for machines to breakdown before doing anything and hence lose a lot of machine-hours which not only impacts the overall production of the company but also hurts the goodwill of the company if the company is not able to deliver the promised output to its buyers.
Longer Machine Life
Another benefit of preventive maintenance is that it helps the machines in having a longer running life because just like humans following a healthy lifestyle live a longer as compared to those people who do not follow a healthy lifestyle. in the same way, machines that are maintained regularly have a longer machine life than those machines which are not maintained or serviced regularly which is the case with breakdown maintenance.
Helpful in Planning
Preventive maintenance helps the company in planning because when the company does this maintenance it gets to know about the condition of the machine as well as its expected useful life and hence company can predict in advance when the machine will completely breakdown and once the company has that idea then it can order new machines and make arrangments for replacing the old machines beforehand which is not possible in case of breakdown maintenance.
Disadvantages of Preventive Maintenance
Costly
The biggest disadvantage of preventive maintenance is that it is very costly because the company has to give annual maintenance charges to the agency or company which is handling the maintenance work irrespective of whether the machine requires maintenance or not. In simple words unlike breakdown maintenance which is needed only in case of machine getting completely stopped in case of preventive maintenance the maintenance is done even when the machine is working fine which results in the company making payment unnecessarily which in turn leads to an increase in operating costs for the company.
Time and Energy Consuming
In the case of preventive maintenance since these maintenances are carried out at specific intervals, it leads to wastage of time and resources for the company because when machines are undergoing preventive maintenance then no work can be done on those machines which lead to loss of man-hours and machine hours thus reducing the efficiency of the company.
Unnecessary Maintenance
Another drawback of preventive maintenance is that sometimes even those machines which do not need any maintenance are also included under preventive maintenance which makes no sense. In simple words suppose you are healthy and your blood tests are also normal and if your doctor asks to take multivitamin tablets then those tablets are of no use to you as you are not vitamin deficient the same thing applies to machines also because if the machine is working properly and requires no maintenance than preventive maintenance is of no use to such machines.
As one can see from the above that preventive maintenance has advantages, as well as disadvantages and that, is the reason why any company thinking of adopting a preventive maintenance strategy should carefully read the above points and then only should take any decision regarding whether to use this strategy or not.