Maintenance management: definitions, types and objectives (2024)

Maintenance management is a structured process put in place to ensure that a company’s assets function efficiently. Find out more!

Maintenance management is one of those aspects related to the management of a company that are usually neglected. In fact, they are of fundamental importance to ensure the maximum operational efficiency of the equipment and ensuring maximum efficiency in the production process.

In this article we analyze in depth the meaning of “maintenance management” by discovering together what are the types, objectives and potential of this important process.

Before we begin, it is useful to underline how maintenance management has evolved considerably in recent years. It has become a fully automated procedure, thanks to the use of CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) systems. These systems have the ability to simplify and optimize any operation related to maintenance management.

Rely on a professional and intuitive Facility Management Softwareto start experiencing the potential of these systems right away. It turns more complex maintenance schedules into much simpler, more enjoyable, more effective and more productive tasks.

What is Maintenance Management?

The expression “maintenance management” refers to the process that has the purpose of planning, scheduling and managing maintenance activities. It relates to the capital goods and assets of a company, controlling the time and costs of intervention and ensuring maximum efficiency in terms of operations and productivity.

Proper maintenance management involves the combination of several factors (including advanced software systems, best practices and qualified personnel). This ensures that everything within the production system is working as expected, avoiding wasted time and resources due to sudden failures or unplanned downtime.

Maintenance management programs are highly customizable and there is no one-size-fits for all solutions. In fact, every company that owns tangible assets has a specific maintenance management plan, designed to meet its needs and aimed at achieving some essential objectives. We’ll see more in the article later on.

Why is maintenance management important?

Maintenance has a direct impact on an organization’s long-term success. Resources and facilities that are inadequately maintained suffer frequent failures that can cause unexpected outages and serious losses in productivity and efficiency.

When carried out correctly, maintenance management helps keep resources in optimal operating condition. It also reduces chain effects caused by continuous malfunctions and unplanned downtime. A truly effective maintenance management program certainly helps to improve the reliability and availability of equipment. It also helps stabilize production with a consequent reduction in costs and a generalized increase in profitability, quality and safety.

What are the Different Types of Maintenance Management?

The maintenance management approach can be reactive, if the interventions are performed to correct a fault after it has occurred, or proactive, if a series of strategies are implemented to prevent errors and malfunctions before they turn into more serious problems to be solved later.

The proposed approaches are both valid and are often used in combination with each other. Of course each of these involve a different investment in terms of implementation time and costs. It is therefore up to the organization to choose which method to use according to its needs.

With reactive maintenance there’s no need to perform any intervention until a fault occurs and technicians are called upon to restore normal operating conditions as soon as possible. This type of maintenance can be used for assets that play a secondary role, for instance, for equipment that, in case of failure, doesn’t involve a complete suspension of the production cycle.

Unlike corrective maintenance, the proactive approach seeks to prevent errors and failures by detecting signs of wear and tear in equipment and intervening in advance with small repairs. The types of maintenance commonly associated with the proactive method are as follows:

• preventive maintenance: aims to solve small problems before they turn into failures, with regular and scheduled operations such as cleaning, lubrication, calibration, replacement, etc.;
• condition-based maintenance: involves the use of sensors and intelligent technologies to monitor operating conditions of assets and allow the maintenance team to adopt the most appropriate solutions;
• predictive maintenance: combines condition-based maintenance with machine learning systems and other computer technologies to monitor equipment failure rates (MTBF, MTTF, MTTR) and therefore predict when future failures will occur;
• prescriptive maintenance: takes predictive maintenance to the next level because, in addition to predicting faults, it also allows self-diagnosis and suggests the best course of action for technicians to take.

What are the objectives of maintenance management?

Regardless of the field of application, in any plant system subject to management, the different forms of maintenance management share similar objectives which can be summarized as follows:

• minimize breakdowns and unplanned downtime;
• extension of the useful life of assets;
• efficient allocation of resources;
• accurate planning of maintenance interventions;
• cost control and budgeting;
• development of automated standards and procedures;
• compliance with standards and industry regulations;
• increased worker safety;
• improvement of the quality of the final product.

The essential tools to keep every aspect of maintenance management under control

Maintenance management processes can be extremely complex: for this reason it becomes important to be helped by advanced software systems, specifically designed to simplify the various activities.

CMMS systems allow you to collect, store, and organize all information related to the maintenance of a company in a centralized database. They are able to produce detailed reports that help keep every aspect of maintenance management under control.

A robust CMMS system offers the ability to:

• avoid manual data tracking;
• monitor resource performance;
• plan preventive and predictive maintenance;
• make more informed decisions;
• automatically update work orders;
• improve communication between stakeholders;
• maintenance activities;
• improve inventory management.

Discover all the potential that a municipal asset management softwareis able to offer and start implementing your personal maintenance management program in an efficient, professional and intuitive system that helps you improve and simplify the management of the different activities.