Reactive Maintenance: 

Understanding the Costly Consequences and Advantages of Proactive Strategies

Introduction:

Maintenance plays a crucial role in ensuring the longevity and optimal performance of any equipment or infrastructure. Reactive maintenance, often referred to as "breakdown maintenance," involves addressing repairs and maintenance issues as they occur. While this approach may seem convenient at first, it often leads to costly consequences in the long run. In this blog, we will delve into the concept of reactive maintenance, explore its drawbacks through examples, and highlight the benefits of adopting proactive maintenance strategies.

Understanding Reactive Maintenance:

Reactive maintenance refers to the practice of repairing or replacing equipment only when it breaks down or experiences a failure. This approach relies on immediate responses to issues and prioritizes addressing them as they arise rather than implementing preventive measures. It essentially involves a "fix-it-when-it's-broken" mentality.

Drawbacks of Reactive Maintenance:

1. Downtime and Disruptions: With reactive maintenance, equipment failures catch businesses off guard. This leads to unexpected downtime, causing interruptions in operations and productivity losses. The longer it takes to repair or replace the faulty equipment, the more severe the impact on the business.

Example: A manufacturing plant using reactive maintenance experiences a sudden breakdown in a critical machine. The unplanned downtime halts the production process, resulting in missed deadlines, customer dissatisfaction, and potential financial penalties

2. Higher Repair Costs: Reactive maintenance often leads to higher repair costs due to the urgency and lack of preparation. Immediate repairs may require emergency service calls, expedited shipping of parts, or even the need to outsource repairs to external contractors, all of which can significantly increase expenses.

Example: A property management company neglects regular maintenance of an elevator until it breaks down unexpectedly. The cost of emergency repairs, including labor, parts, and additional charges for after-hours service, is much higher than if they had adopted a proactive maintenance plan.

3. Safety Concerns: Neglecting preventive maintenance increases the risk of accidents and jeopardizes the safety of both employees and customers. Faulty equipment can pose severe hazards, leading to injuries, property damage, or even legal consequences.

Example: A restaurant fails to conduct regular inspections and maintenance on its gas lines. This oversight leads to a gas leak and subsequent explosion, causing severe injuries to staff and customers and resulting in legal ramifications.

Benefits of Proactive Maintenance:

1. Enhanced Equipment Reliability:

Proactive maintenance focuses on preventive measures, such as routine inspections, servicing, and proactive repairs. By addressing potential issues before they escalate, businesses can significantly improve the reliability and performance of their equipment, reducing the likelihood of unexpected breakdowns.

2. Increased Productivity:

By implementing proactive maintenance strategies, businesses can minimize the occurrence of unexpected failures, leading to reduced downtime and improved productivity. Regular maintenance ensures equipment operates optimally, maximizing efficiency and reducing the likelihood of sudden interruptions.

3. Cost Savings:

Adopting proactive maintenance allows organizations to plan and budget for regular upkeep and repairs, minimizing the need for expensive emergency fixes. Preventive maintenance is often less costly than reactive approaches, as it enables businesses to identify issues early on and address them before they escalate into major problems.

Types of reactive maintenance

Reactive maintenance is an umbrella term for the following types of maintenance, all of which are responsive strategies to solve a preexisting mechanical issue:

1.Breakdown maintenance

Breakdown maintenance refers to action taken on a piece of equipment that won’t start or operate whatsoever. The machinery is completely broken, and may require extensive repairs to run again (or may need to be replaced entirely).

In most cases, breakdown maintenance is an unplanned event, and the repairs are urgently requested in order to resume normal business operations. In the event of any type of stall or delay, the time in between can result in downtime, which will ultimately affect the bottom line of a business. If at all possible, it’s always extremely helpful to have some kind of backup plan in place should an essential piece of equipment fail. This will serve to minimize losses.

A bit more unusual are planned breakdowns, for which a business can properly prepare for and work around the maintenance of an asset. Run-to-fail (or RTF) triggers are an integral part of planned breakdowns, as they enable equipment to run until they can no longer function, giving the business enough time to request repairs. Such planning can ultimately reduce the cost of the maintenance performed.

2.Run-to-failure maintenance

Run-to-failure maintenance is deliberately allowing a machine to run until it breaks down. After the failure, reactive maintenance is performed—no prior or preventive maintenance is performed on the machine in advance.

The difference between run-to-fail and breakdown maintenance is that run-to-fail is always a deliberate decision (i.e. planned), and there is some type of plan in place to repair the item without interrupting production. In addition, the equipment that is allowed to break down does not pose a health or safety risk to operating personnel.

A very simple example of run-to-fail maintenance is allowing a light bulb to burn out before worrying about replacing it, but can also refer to machinery that simply stops running on its own after a while, as part of a normal operational process. Rather than stopping everything to perform preventive maintenance (and absorbing associated costs), it makes more sense to simply wait for the machine to break down on its own before performing maintenance.

3.Corrective maintenance

Corrective maintenance any type of action that targets and repairs a system malfunction so that equipment can be restored to proper working order. One plus of corrective maintenance is that the defect may be caught or noticed before it causes a significant problem, or results in a total equipment breakdown.

The important thing to remember about corrective maintenance is that it does not require the repair of a totally-busted asset. Rather, corrective maintenance is performed to correct a defect, or a potential problem area, in equipment that is still running. This gives the business more time to respond to issues, and even mimics preventive maintenance by allowing for the opportunity to correct problems before they escalate.

Corrective maintenance is often performed on faulty parts that are discovered while other repairs are being made to the same machine. For instance, if you’re installing new carpeting in your office and discover mold growth beneath the old carpet, you would then take steps to understand and correct the conditions of such growth.

4.Emergency maintenance

Emergency maintenance requires a last-minute response to the sudden breakdown of an asset. However, emergency maintenance entails some type of threat to health and safety (e.g. safety locks fail on a machine with hazardous moving parts).

Unlike breakdown maintenance, emergency maintenance is never planned, though businesses can have plans in place so that personnel is prepared in the event of an emergency. In general, it’s recommended that all emergency phone numbers for dealing with incidences of emergency maintenance are listed in a high-traffic area, and that there is an effective evacuation plan in place, should the circumstance call for it.

The best way to prevent emergency maintenance is by adhering to planned and preventive maintenance routines, which help to identify issues that could escalate to emergency situations if not addressed.

Case Study: XYZ Manufacturing Company

XYZ Manufacturing Company previously relied on reactive maintenance, resulting in frequent equipment breakdowns and high repair costs. The company decided to shift to a proactive maintenance strategy. They implemented a preventive maintenance program, which included regular inspections, lubrication, and replacement of worn parts. As a result, they experienced:

• A significant decrease in equipment failures and subsequent downtime.
• Improved product quality due to the consistent performance of machinery.
• Lower overall maintenance costs, as they were able to plan and schedule repairs in advance, leveraging bulk purchases and negotiated service contracts.

Conclusion: Reactive maintenance might seem like a cost-saving approach in the short term, but it often leads to more significant expenses and disruptions in the long run. By embracing proactive maintenance strategies, businesses can increase equipment reliability, enhance productivity, and ultimately reduce costs. Investing in preventive maintenance programs ensures a smoother operation, improved safety, and higher customer satisfaction, thereby driving long-term success.