If you only religiously follow the preventive maintenance (PM) requirements of any of the major vehicle and equipment OEMs, you are losing out on half the value and half the advantages of running a PM program. It’s like going to Las Vegas, winning at poker and leaving half of your chips on the table.
Yet, I routinely run into that very problem. There is much more to PM than just the recommended routine maintenance. There needs to be the 3Ps:
- P1, Prevent. Perform PM tasks from the task list to help ensure that your vehicles and equipment last longer.
- P2, Postpone. Perform the inspection tasks, also on the task list, to find defects, deterioration or damage to develop your corrective backlog.
- P3, Predict. Turn those defects, deterioration or damage into corrective work orders. Then, execute your corrective backlog to efficiently and effectively avoid breakdowns.
A Common Situation
Typically, with PM programs, technicians perform the PM service, write down deficiencies and then bring them to the shop manager to go over what can and needs to be done now, and what can be deferred and done at a later time.
The objective here is to implement the Prevent (P1) and Postpone (P2) steps to identify defects, deterioration or damage, and then do something about it before a failure occurs.
Sounds simple enough, but it is not, because of the matter of timing. If you concentrate on P1 and P2, your fleet will run well for a while.
In fact, doing PM for these purposes defers breakdowns that might have started next year or later. So, concentrating on the first two Ps avoids problems in the longer future.
Predict
The third P, Predict, involves determining when failure – in the form of defects, deterioration or damage that is already in the spiral toward failure – will occur. Typically, the items you can detect at this point will end up in failure within one week to 12 months.
Most corrective maintenance is work detected by P3. This is mostly backlog work that can be planned, scheduled and effectively executed. This is the formula for success, as long as you get to the corrective maintenance before the breakdown.
Since the majority of the issues that require corrective work is in the process of failing, there is usually some time to prepare. This time should be used for procurement of the likely spares, locating any tools not already available, finding documentation and doing other activities.
In aggregate, these are planning activities.
Once everything necessary for the work is available, you schedule the job.
To get the most value out of a PM program, incorporate the 3Ps so your shop can focus on doing the right things at the right time. Don’t leave your winnings behind.
Joel Levitt is director of international projects for Life Cycle Engineering (www.lce.com), an organization that provides consulting, engineering, applied technology and education solutions that deliver lasting results. Previously, he was president of Springfield Resources (www.maintenancetraining.com), a management consulting firm.
