Maintenance of equipment is organised by class, not by machine, because the pumps on a site fail the same way and need the same tasks, and a programme written per class is a dozen pages where one written per machine is hundreds. This page says how a site moves from maintenance machine by machine, the way it usually starts, to a programme per class, what the maintenance of machines costs when it is reactive against when it is planned, and what a maintenance program for equipment contains once it is written down.
Machine by machine, and why it does not scale
A site starts by maintaining the machines that break: the compressor because it stopped, the conveyor because it squealed. Each gets attention when it demands it, which is reactive by definition, and the history, if any, is in the technician's head. It works for a handful of machines and fails at a few dozen, because the team is always at the last failure and never ahead of the next. This site's worked example, 84 breakdowns a month at 3.4 hours each, is what machine-by-machine looks like in numbers.
Organising by class
Group the register into classes that fail alike: rotating equipment, conveyors, packaging machines, forklifts, building plant, and so on. For each class, decide the strategy from the consequence of failure and write the tasks once: the daily check, the monthly inspection with its checklist, the run-hour service, the annual test. Every machine in the class inherits the tasks with its own dates and meter. A dozen classes cover most sites, and the maintenance strategy page on this site works one class through.
What a programme for equipment contains
The register by class. The strategy per class with its reason. The tasks per class with triggers, intervals, checklists and owners. The spares held per class. The statutory tests and their intervals. The load, as preventive hours a month against the hours available; the example runs 60 jobs and 66 hours across 180 assets. And the review: the monthly report and the quarterly adjustment of intervals from the reactive history. Written that way it is a dozen pages and a schedule; written machine by machine it is never finished.
What it costs, both ways
Planned work on the example site costs 1.1 hours a job; the same work as a breakdown costs 3.4, and the difference across the month's breakdowns is $9,273.60 at a $48 loaded rate. The programme's own cost is the preventive hours, $3,168. The maintenance of machines is paid for either way; the programme is the cheaper way, and the maintenance log worksheet on this site is where a team without software writes it down.
Questions people ask about maintenance of equipment
How many asset classes should a site have?
As many as fail differently, which is usually a dozen or so. Classes with one machine in them are fine; classes so broad that the tasks do not fit are not.
Should every machine be maintained?
Every machine should have a decided strategy, and for some the decision is run to failure with a spare. Maintaining everything on an interval is as wasteful as maintaining nothing.
Where does the manufacturer's manual fit?
As the starting point for the class's tasks and intervals, adjusted from the site's own history once there is one.