Maintenance pm programs are the organised form of preventive maintenance: a decided set of tasks, a schedule that raises them, people who own them, and a review that adjusts them. Maintenance pm on a work order is shorthand for preventive maintenance; maintenance pms in the plural are the tasks themselves. Planned preventative maintenance is the same idea from the building side. This page says what program maintenance is against ad hoc work, what makes a programme last past its first enthusiasm, and gives a maintenance program example for a site of a few hundred assets.
Program against ad hoc
Ad hoc maintenance is work done when someone remembers or when something breaks. A program is work raised by a schedule from decided tasks, with a record of what was done. The difference is not the tasks, which may be identical, but the trigger and the record: a programme's tasks happen when due and leave history; ad hoc work happens when convenient and leaves memory. The reactive share is the measure of which a site has.
The shape of a program that lasts
A register that is kept current, so that new assets get tasks and scrapped ones stop raising them. Tasks with owners. A schedule levelled to the hours available, so that compliance is possible. An overdue list read daily. Findings recorded and acted on, so that inspections are worth doing. And a quarterly review that shortens, lengthens or drops tasks from the reactive history. Programmes die when any of those stops; most die at the overdue list, when nobody reads it and the backlog becomes normal.
A program example for a small site
Register: 180 assets in a dozen classes. Strategy: risk-ranked, with the top classes on inspection and interval tasks, the middle on inspections, the rest run to failure with spares. Load: 60 preventive jobs a month, 66 hours, beside a reactive load the programme is meant to shrink from 84 breakdowns. Owners: two technicians by area, operators on daily checks. Review: monthly report with compliance, findings and the reactive share; quarterly adjustment of intervals. That is this site's worked example, and its arithmetic is on the preventative maintenance guide.
Starting one without software
The maintenance log worksheet on this site holds the register, the tasks, the due and done dates and the findings for a small site. A team that runs it for a quarter has a programme, a reactive share and a list of what the software will need to do. Programmes that start with a software purchase and no register usually spend their first year finding out what they own.
Questions people ask about maintenance pm programs
What does PM stand for in maintenance?
Preventive maintenance, or preventative; the same thing. A PM is one task, PMs are the set, the PM program is the organised whole.
How many PMs should a site have?
As many as its strategy per asset produces and its hours can carry. This site's example runs 60 a month; a plant with a thousand assets runs many more.
Why do PM programs fail?
Because the schedule raises more work than the team can do, the overdue list stops being read, and deferral becomes the norm. The fix is a levelled schedule and a daily habit, not a better tool.