Maintenance plan in 10 steps

In a company the maintenance plan can ensure that your operations run smoothly without headaches. And by clarifying taboos once and for all, making a maintenance plan is not that complicated.

Today I want to explain the essential steps for a good preventive maintenance plan focused on small or medium industries and that you can even apply if you are self-employed or have a micro enterprise.

Is not it better to wait for it to be damaged to repair it?

I have heard several entrepreneurs say that a maintenance plan is not necessary because it costs a lot, because they do not have the personnel or the knowledge to do it.

A failure in any of the components of your business (be it machine or software) can make you lose a lot of money and reputation. Not including the accidents that your employees may suffer and the legal consequences that entails.

So do not take your job lightly and follow our simple tips to make a generic maintenance plan before the evils get worse.

10 Steps to make a maintenance plan or maintenance program

It is not necessary to write a document with 500 pages or make a presentation with 250 sheets. For us it is much more feasible a graphic and a document that has only the information you need so that you can apply maintenance as it should.

To get this you need to estimate the resources for maintenance. And when I talk about resources, I mean:

The money that you must invest in the maintenance

Of course, the amount depends on how complex your company is and the equipment you own. It is not the same to do maintenance to a plant that creates packaging for jams that a company that offers subscription TV services.

The supplies you need

As for example, spare parts, tools and consumables (oils, lubricants, fuels, etc.).

The staff you need

Your own employees or help from another maintenance company? Each one needs a different amount of money and time, so you must be sure who is going to perform the maintenance.

A system for recording information

Any maintenance plan needs to anticipate future failures and remind you to review a piece so that it happens to you as well as to my car🙁

I do not recommend that you trust your memory and less if you have a company that demands a lot of work to maintain it. Instead, you can use an application that shows you the information in graphics that you do understand (such as the Graphics Engine for the Recurring Services application offered by our Playbill application platform,  which I’ll talk about later).

Once you have a basic idea of ​​these points, you can start creating your plan. In this case I will take the example of our maintenance application so that you understand it better.

Read the history of repairs made

If you have already carried out a repair or maintenance task it will be very useful to start with your maintenance plan.

See what systems, equipment, responsible and spare parts you have used in repairs including the date they were made . So you’ll have an idea of ​​when you should schedule the first maintenance.

Make a list of the equipment and systems that make up your company

A system is the set of components and machines with a common purpose, for example: the cooling system or the water treatment system . Record the name of each system and its component elements in the Recurrent Services application  of our Playbill application  platform.

Once you have scored each system and each of its elements you can classify them according to the type of machine, such as : mechanical equipment, hydraulic equipment, electronic equipment, office equipment, cleaning equipment, structure, etc .

Difference which are the equipment to which maintenance can be applied and to which

Once you have the inventory of all your equipment, you should identify which is feasible to apply maintenance and which ones you should simply replenish completely.

Many companies claim that their maintenance plan does not work simply because they try to repair parts of a machine that must be replaced completely. And in those attempts you lose a lot of money.

Designate the people responsible for carrying out the maintenance plan

Before appointing any responsible person, you must be sure that your company is capable of carrying out the maintenance plan on its own. Identify if you have the time, money, necessary knowledge and legal permits to do so.

In the application of Recurring Services  you can include the internal manager that will be in charge of the maintenance or the external company that will be in charge.

If you need more help, you can read this section: Types of maintenance according to the person in charge

Check the equipment manuals

It is necessary to know what are the specifications and recommendations of the manufacturers (especially if they have some type of guarantee). In case something bad happens, you can ask for support.

According to what you find in the manuals, you can enter in Recurring Services the information you need, such as: revision deadline, expected useful life, recommendations for types of oils, lubricants or oils and safety measures .

In addition, the manufacturer’s manuals should also indicate the number of elements of the machines and how to replace them.

Quick advice: check the warranty of the equipment and if you purchased them, you purchased a service plan from the manufacturer.

Check legal obligations

Write down in Easy Accounting which are these components with the specifications of law that you must comply with. If you know who is responsible for doing the inspection and how often you do it, you can include it in the system weeks in advance.

If you have already opened your company, check the documents you obtained at the time of registration, there you have the rules that you must meet.

Make a list of necessary requirements to review and repair each component

With the help of the operators, the expert who designed your plant or the experience you already acquired after having repaired the equipment you can create the list that each machine and equipment needs. Do not intend to go up to repair the roof and go down to look for the tools once you’re up there, right?

Choose the type of maintenance plan you are going to apply

There are several types, such as corrective maintenance (repair when damaged), predictive maintenance (predict when something will be damaged to anticipate), preventive maintenance (which we do to avoid damage), maintenance modification (replacement partial or total of a piece).

In our article The easy and practical types of maintenance for SMEs we explain these and other types of maintenance (maybe you should keep an eye on them).

Create your short and executable plan of maintenance tasks

• Do it in a way that you have to write only the essentials, for example:
• Date of the next maintenance.
• Name of the team and the system to which it belongs.
• Key information obtained from the manufacturer’s manuals.
• Specifies if it is a legal obligation and its requirements.
• Responsible name.
• Specialty of work.
• Frequency with which it must be done.

About Post Author

Tony Jimenez

Babu@cyonwo.com