Preventive maintenance tools is a phrase covering three very different kinds of thing, and confusion between them is expensive. There is software that holds the register and the schedule. There are the check sheets and templates a technician actually uses at the machine. And there are condition-monitoring sensors that measure a machine and tell you when to act. Most sites need the first two, benefit enormously from doing them properly, and buy the third far earlier than the evidence justifies. This page separates the three and says who needs which.
Scheduling software: needed once a second person is involved
The register, the intervals, the due dates and the history. One organised person can do this in a spreadsheet; two people cannot, because the spreadsheet becomes a dependency rather than a record. That transition, not asset count, is the trigger.
Check sheets: needed by everybody, always
The document a technician holds at the machine. Specific enough that items can fail, short enough to be done honestly, with room to write what was found. These are free, they are the highest-value tool in maintenance, and they are the ones most often inherited generic and never revised.
Condition sensors: needed by a few assets, not by sites
Vibration, thermal and oil analysis genuinely predict failure on high-criticality rotating plant. They also cost real money in hardware, analysis and the skill to read the output, and they answer a question you should only be asking about the assets at the top of your criticality ranking.
The order matters more than the tools
Register, then check sheets, then scheduling software, then sensors if the criticality ranking justifies them. Sites that buy sensors before finishing the register end up with excellent data about three machines and no idea what else they own.
Questions people ask about preventive maintenance tools
Do we need special tools for PM?
Beyond what the tasks require, no. The tools that improve preventive maintenance are a finished register and honest check sheets, and both are free.
Are inspection rounds a tool?
A practice rather than a tool, and one of the most effective. A weekly walk with a sheet finds more than most sensors on most plant.
When are sensors worth it?
When an asset is critical, expensive to fail, and degrades in a way a sensor can see. Three conditions, all of them, and most plant fails at least one.