Maintenance plan: what is it, and how can one be created?

It is widely known that periodic maintenance prolongs the life cycle of equipment, keeping it in optimum condition. Find out how to optimize your maintenance plan!

However, a lack of regular maintenance often leads to equipment failure or, in the worst-case scenario, occupational accidents. This results in substantial costs to companies and increased operational downtime. How can we ultimately avoid this problem? This is exactly where a maintenance plan becomes essential.

What is a maintenance plan?

A maintenance plan is a technical document which lists scheduled maintenance work for each piece of equipment. It provides guidelines for all maintenance activities, with a description of each task, its defined frequency and the resources required to complete it.

Maintenance work ensures that equipment keeps operating with the best possible performance, within its capacities, and in a safe manner, without anomalies of any kind such as strange noises or overheating.

As such, an effective maintenance plan ensures that companies are successful in the long term, since it improves the safety, reliability and productivity of each piece of equipment.

What information should be included in a maintenance plan?

With regard to creating a maintenance plan, in order for it to be well-structured and have good results, we must bear in mind a certain information set which is indispensable to its fulfilment. Below is the information that should be included in every maintenance plan.

• Work description: the maintenance plan should clearly describe what must be done in each work order, the priority areas and sequence of activities.
• Instructions: maintenance work must comply with specific quality standards. In order to achieve them, it is essential for the plan to have exact instructions with regard to tasks.
• Scheduling: the purpose of scheduling is to ensure that the work is done at the frequency needed to avoid downtime and equipment failure.
• Workers: the plan should specify the technical skill set needed for each maintenance task, to help choose the most appropriate technician to do the work in question.

Three steps for creating an effective maintenance plan

Next, we will present the five steps to be followed to create an effective maintenance plan for your company.

• Detail the maintenance work that will be needed for each piece of equipment. Keep descriptions clear so that they are easily understood by the technicians who will perform the tasks.
• Schedule work on the calendar.
• Add workers or suppliers to the tasks, with the anticipated duration of each one.

In summary, a maintenance plan determines which maintenance work must be done and how. It is based on the “why” of maintenance tasks and should be updated as data becomes more complete.

How technology transforms maintenance planning

Using an asset management platform (CMMS – Computerized Maintenance Management System) significantly changes how maintenance plans are planned and managed. Following are some of the benefits of using technology to create maintenance plans for your company:

Real-time task monitoring

With maintenance management software, you can monitor the status of scheduled maintenance tasks for the plan in real time and ensure that they are done properly and in a timely manner.

Establish maintenance plans based on time or readings

With maintenance management software, you can set periodic maintenance tasks based on the mileage of a truck, or on the number of operating hours of a machine, for example. Any plan can contain one or more tasks, provided that they have the same frequency (daily, weekly or biannual maintenance).

More organized maintenance scheduling

Organizing maintenance schedules is essential, especially when several maintenance strategies are used within the same company. CMMS software gives managers an overview of all maintenance activities – both corrective and preventive – in order to prove whether the tasks are being done in the desired manner.

Valuekeep, the CMMS solution used by leading companies

Are you familiar with Valuekeep? It is a cloud solution for managing maintenance operations for equipment and assets and is used by major Portuguese companies such as Luz Saúde, Casa da Música and Prozis.

Learn more about this user-friendly, flexible intelligent CMMS solution, and start prolonging the useful life of your equipment and assets, as well as cutting maintenance costs.