Preventive maintenance
Preventive maintenance is servicing equipment on a schedule before it fails, rather than waiting for a breakdown. The schedule is driven by elapsed time, by runtime hours, or by the manufacturer's stated interval. It buys more planned visits and fewer emergencies, which is usually the cheaper trade for both parties.
Preventive, reactive and predictive maintenance
Preventive maintenance runs to a schedule. Reactive maintenance runs when something breaks. Predictive maintenance runs when sensor data suggests failure is approaching, which requires instrumentation most small and mid-sized service businesses do not have.
Most service businesses run a mix of the first two, and the useful question is which equipment deserves to move from reactive to preventive. The answer is usually whatever is expensive to fail.
Setting the interval
Start with the manufacturer's interval, then adjust with your own service history. Equipment in a dusty workshop or a coastal environment will need attention sooner than the manual assumes, and your records are the evidence for that.
Runtime based intervals beat calendar based intervals where usage varies a lot between sites. A generator run weekly and a generator run daily should not be on the same schedule.
Making the schedule stick
A preventive schedule fails when nobody is responsible for putting the visits on the calendar. The plan has to generate the jobs automatically, or it becomes a document that is reviewed once a year with regret.
Omni Field creates the visits from recurring job templates on daily, weekly, monthly or custom schedules, with auto-assignment to a preferred technician, and keeps the maintenance history against the specific asset so the next technician sees what was done last time.
Common questions
See it in the product
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