Examples of Corrective Maintenance and Procedures
Corrective maintenance goes hand in hand with preventive maintenance, although it differs in several ways. We provide several examples of corrective maintenance below. But before we dive in, let’s examine the differences between preventive maintenance and corrective maintenance.
Whether you run a machine shop, a laundry facility, or a software company, both preventive maintenance and corrective maintenance are certain to be on your to-do lists. They are as vital to the smooth operation of business and industry as machine lubricant is to the machines on which we perform this regular maintenance.
Preventive maintenance and corrective maintenance are often bundled together for the sake of efficiency and, well, simple common sense.
Preventive and Corrective Maintenance
Preventive maintenance is proactive. It is intended to keep things in working order. It includes regular inspections, parts replacements, cleaning, lubrication, and more.
As the name implies — or rather states outright — this type of maintenance is designed and implemented to prevent mechanical problems that might lead to expensive repairs that knock systems offline and out of order.
Corrective maintenance is often but not always reactive. In other words, corrective maintenance can be both planned and unplanned. The procedure seeks to repair and/or replace parts that have broken down or have malfunctioned. It also fixes and/or replaces parts that will inevitably break down; thus, it is a kind of preventive maintenance strategy.
It should be noted that planned corrective maintenance can include allowing a piece of machinery to fail, at which point, it is either fixed or replaced. These types of run-to-failure maintenance tasks are quite common, depending on the piece of equipment.
Both of the interrelated tasks are performed by expert and experienced maintenance technicians or maintenance teams, depending on the size of the facility. Larger facilities may even have a team of maintenance managers.
The maintenance work and maintenance tasks themselves are performed based on a maintenance schedule that takes into account several pieces of info. These pieces include operation cycles as well as the knowledge of optimal operational conditions and the typical wear-and-tear for each machine and each machine part.
A simplified planned maintenance workflow might look like this:
- Perform regularly scheduled preventive maintenance
- Identify problems or potential problems, if any
- Corrective maintenance. Decide whether to:
- Fix now (emergency maintenance)
- Fix later (work order for repair)
Quick notes: Nos. 1, 2, and 3 above comprise steps in any comprehensive maintenance
audit. Both 3a and 3b are examples of implementing a priority system of corrective maintenance.
Now let’s look at a few real-world examples of corrective maintenance and examine how each would fit into the workflow listed above.
Examples of Corrective Maintenance
There are as many examples of corrective maintenance as there are moving parts in a facility. We thought we’d highlight a few of the more common examples — especially for the benefit of those readers who aren’t as familiar with some of the more complex machinery in modern construction and other operations.
The numbers in parentheses refer to the maintenance workflow summarized above.
HVAC
During preventive maintenance of the facility’s HVAC system (1), we see that it’s leaking refrigerant (2). Since this particular AC unit can be offline while the others in the system pick up the slack, we decide to shut the unit down and put in a work order for corrective maintenance (3b).
Plumbing
While performing regular plumbing maintenance and inspections (1), the crew notices that the water pressure in the back half of the building is low (2). Further inspections find that a pipe has become clogged by mineral deposits (2, again). The team gets to work on an emergency repair right away (3a).
Conveyor Systems
While performing regularly scheduled maintenance (1), we notice that a rotor or belt is showing signs of wear (2). Since this particular system is unable to go offline for an extended period of time without causing delivery problems, we decide to fix it now (3a), since we have the spare parts available in the shop.
Storee Construction
These are all good and basic examples of corrective maintenance. With regular preventive maintenance and timely corrective maintenance working in tandem, construction operations, warehouses, and other types of the industry should benefit. They’ll see less machine downtime and operational delays, increased employee safety, and fewer injuries, and longer equipment lifespans.
We all want each of our assets to perform its intended function. When things go wrong — or are about to go wrong — we prepare a schedule of repair that will return the asset to a condition of full functionality. So-called condition monitoring and condition-based maintenance, along with predictive maintenance and corrective maintenance will help keep systems online.
Get in touch with Storee Construction today if you have any questions. With more than five decades of construction contracting experience, we’ve seen just about everything. You can count on us to be your dedicated partner to bring projects online on time and on budget — every time.
