Reactive vs Proactive

Preventative Maintenance – A misunderstood benefit

The reality of preventative maintenance is a choice, a choice between being Proactive or Reactive in your approach to your asset liability and longevity.

The reactive maintenance schedule has many indicators such as patching equipment to get it running as quickly as possible but never going back to complete the full repair. In the short term this seems like the best option, but over a period you are incrementally exasperating the faults until catastrophic failure is reached and the eventual cost of repair is fiscally untenable.

Another indicator is to “Squeeze the stone” going with the cheapest quote or price, experience shows this is usually a false economy in relation to maintenance, but the biggest nail in this coffin lid is the loss of planning and control over the situation. Giving up this aspect of your organisation is like tying your hand behind your back… your good hand that is.

The proactive maintenance schedule is a different animal again, generally unpopular at the costing level of an organisation it is haunted by an unpopular perception. “All they do is walk around with a clipboard” “There is no value in what they are doing” “We can utilise our budget in better areas” at this point your maintenance system is probably working.

With a robust Inspections, Lubrications, Regulatory application, Critical spares identification and storage, plus a timed replacement schedule you take back control.

You can plan production with certainty, conduct repair or replacement works at the most beneficial time for your business, marginalise breakdown downtime.

The ability to reference your historical repairs and downtime data, allows you to establish the trends that allow you the best time windows for implementing research and design, project execution or upgrades, whilst marginalising the effects on the bottom dollar.

This is the critical point at which most organisations make a choice. The time they choose to misunderstand the benefits of their proactive maintenance system and go back to a reactive system. This is the time when the choice to throw the invested time and money getting to this point away becomes enticing.

What will you choose?

At Bespoke Trade Solutions, we have seen this pattern time and time again, new management, shifts in direction for the company or simply not realising the level of excellence the organisation has achieved. All lead to a misunderstanding on what a truly proactive maintenance system looks like.

Though the choice must be made in the moment it is our hope you will choose control and certainty over the other options, despite how they are wrapped today.