What is Routine Maintenance and Why it is Important

There are many terms used for maintenance in facilities management, and it is difficult to comprehend the subtleties of each term.

This comprehensive guide will help you discover what routine maintenance is, what the difference is between preventive maintenance and routine maintenance, and how you can begin your facility right now.

What Is Routine Maintenance?

Routine maintenance is any maintenance job performed regularly, at a set time, to ensure that facilities are operating efficiently. Routine maintenance could be as easy as ensuring that bathrooms are filled with paper towels at the end of each day or as intricate as checking and adjusting heavy equipment.

Numerous routine maintenance jobs are a perfect example of the saying, “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” Many aspects of the routine maintenance of facilities are considered routine, like functioning lighting bulbs, empty trash cans, and sparkling floors until they’re missing one morning.

By creating a routine maintenance schedule, you will make sure that the daily chores that keep your facility running don’t fall through the cracks.

The following are some examples of routine maintenance of a machine system

• Lubricating and cleaning of machinery
• Replacing the worn-out parts of the equipment
• Regular testing of equipment like a fire alarm to ensure their safety
• Maintaining the workplace, including removing dust and keeping the floor and windows clean.
• Final visual inspection which helps the final inspector to observe the surface of an object, looking with their bare eyes for cracks or physical damages

Benefits and drawbacks of routine maintenance

Here are a few of the greatest advantages and disadvantages of routine maintenance implementation.

As regular maintenance forms an essential component of any preventive maintenance effort and brings the same benefit:

• it improves asset lifespan
• it decreases the chance of unexpected equipment failures.
• it ensures that assets remain in good working order
• It helps you better estimate your spare part requirements for inventory
• It is a kind of maintenance that can be standardized and made more efficient

Although routine maintenance is essential to prevent breakdowns, there’s a downside we need to discuss.

The primary reason for avoiding preventive maintenance (and as a result, the main reason for routine maintenance) is that it frequently is a waste of resources to perform maintenance that may not be necessary at the moment.

It’s a problem, but it could be addressed by optimizing the maintenance routines of your business.

When you first create plans for your project, you’ll likely adhere to the guidelines laid out in the machine’s manual. Based on a variety of elements (how accurate are the suggestions of the OEM manual?), the conditions that the machine operates in the replacement parts you are using and the force you exert on the machine, etc.), the requirements for everyday tasks may be greater or less than the recommended.

The most effective way to tackle this issue is to employ a CMMS software like Limble to record detailed maintenance logs and keep track of indicators like the MTBF (Mean Timing Between Failures) that will give you an idea of whether you’ll need to do additional or less maintenance on particular assets.

Types of Routine Maintenance

Routine maintenance tasks are designed to stop breakdowns and increase the life of the equipment. There are four types of routine maintenance.

• Timing-Based Maintenance (TBM): It emphasizes replacing parts at specific intervals, times, or usage indicators regardless of the condition. It is typically used to maintain assets with clearly defined service lines, where they are prone to failure due to age. As per Efficient Plant Mag, only a tiny fraction of the failure types is caused by age.
• Failure-Finding Maintenance (FFM): this one aims to identify the hidden faults within the equipment. It’s typically applied to equipment used to protect, such as safety valves. FFM is carried out at set intervals to prevent equipment from shutting down, hazards to safety, and emergencies.
• Risk-Based Maintenance (RBM): RBM prioritizes the maintenance of high-risk assets. Levels of risk are established by analysing the probability of equipment failure and the seriousness of related consequences.
• Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM): CBM involves monitoring the assets to identify signs of imminent breakdowns and taking appropriate actions to ensure that they are running at a high level. Work orders are issued when there is a need for attention.

Routine Maintenance Reduces the Amount of Time That Is Lost To

Maintenance routines are designed to ensure that machines, equipment, and structures operate at their best. If a particular component requires oiling, it could operate at a slower pace and decrease the effectiveness of an entire line. If dirt gets in the way of one of the components, an entire production line could be shut down until the issue is fixed. Cleaning and lubricating equipment regularly can prevent such problems.

Additionally, routine maintenance can be scheduled daily, allowing companies to make the most of their maintenance staff. For instance, if maintenance technicians are required to move from one urgent work request in one area to another, they could be required to travel between different locations, gather various items and tools, or shift their mental focus between one issue and the next. Maintenance personnel performing routine maintenance could clean, inspect and alter a variety of items within a single piece of equipment far quicker.

Maintenance Routine and CMMS Software

If you’re eager to elevate your facility’s routine maintenance up a notch, then an automated maintenance system (CMMS) might be the perfect solution for you.

CMMS software lets you keep all checklists in the cloud, making them available to the team from any location and anytime using any mobile device. You can also assign digital maintenance tasks and plan blocks of time that you can dedicate to doing routine maintenance.

Beyond the normal maintenance tasks, CMMS tools also allow your employees to take on proactive maintenance and preventive maintenance.

Find out what you can on CMMS software and its capabilities to discover ways you can improve the efficiency of your facility.

How Can You Maximize Routine Maintenance?

Regular maintenance can provide a great return on investment, considering the decrease in emergency work orders, improved performance of machinery, as well as fewer requirements for replacement of equipment.

To maximize the value of routine maintenance, you should provide instruction and training for maintenance technicians on how to clean, examine the condition of, lubricate, service, and adjust components, equipment, or systems. Make a complete maintenance checklist for every equipment or machine that needs regular maintenance. Then, research the industry standard for lubricating, replacing, or cleaning to ensure that regular maintenance is in place.

Routine maintenance is crucial to keep your commercial floor scrubber operating at its best, ensuring its longevity and efficiency. For a wide range of commercial floor scrubbers, you can explore various options online to find the one that suits your needs

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Final Words

Regular maintenance is a great strategy to increase the efficiency of assets, less need to replace equipment, and a high return on investment. It’s an easy method that is easy to implement no matter your level of maintenance expertise.