Preventive Maintenance (PM)

The basic philosophy of this maintenance is the proverbial sayings "A stitch in time saves nine", & "Prevention is better than cure". Preventive maintenance is carrying out to decrease the possibility of failures. The functions of preventive maintenance will be such as oiling, greasing, cleaning, voltage and current checkup, etc. On the other hand, it may be dismantling and assembling a part or entire machine in order to overhaul completely based on certain time scale. Thus it covers the entire range of involvement of careful analysis of maintenance requirements like cost relationships, maintenance planning and control, corrective actions, spare part management, etc. Thus the objectives of the PM can be summarised as follows.

Objectives of Preventive Maintenance

• To minimise the probability of unanticipated interruption of production or major failure by uncovering or locating any condition that may lead to it.
• To increase the availability of the equipment and to keep it ready to use at any moment, thus to enhance the reliability of the equipment.
• To reduce the work content of maintenance job as it tries to prevent the major failures.
• To minimise the maintenance cost (by achieving the minimum repair cost).
• To assure safety of life of the operators.