Preventive maintenance (PM) is maintenance you schedule before anything goes wrong: inspecting, cleaning, lubricating, adjusting, replacing wear parts and testing equipment at regular intervals. The aim is to keep assets available and safe, extend their life and replace expensive surprises with predictable, planned work. "Preventative maintenance" means the same thing.
Types of preventive maintenance triggers
| Trigger | Example | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Calendar (time-based) | Every 90 days; annually | Assets that age regardless of use; compliance inspections |
| Usage (meter-based) | Every 500 operating hours; every 10,000 km | Assets whose wear tracks use — engines, compressors, vehicles |
| Condition-based | When vibration or temperature exceeds a limit | Critical rotating equipment — see predictive maintenance |
Preventive vs corrective vs predictive
| Item | Corrective (reactive) | Preventive | Predictive |
|---|---|---|---|
| When work happens | After failure | On a fixed schedule | When data shows degradation |
| Planning | Unplanned | Planned | Planned, data-driven |
| Main risk | Downtime, secondary damage, safety | Some unnecessary servicing | Sensor/analytics cost and complexity |
| Typical fit | Cheap, non-critical, easily replaced items | Most important equipment | High-value, critical equipment |
Most organizations use all three: corrective maintenance for low-value items where run-to-failure is cheapest, preventive maintenance for the bulk of important equipment, and predictive maintenance where the cost of failure justifies monitoring.
Benefits and costs
- Fewer unplanned failures and less downtime.
- Longer asset life and better resale value.
- Safety and compliance — many inspections are legally required.
- Predictable workload and budget — work is scheduled, parts are ordered ahead.
- Warranty protection — manufacturers may require documented servicing.
PM is not free: too-frequent servicing wastes labor and parts, and every intervention carries a small risk of introducing a fault. The goal is the right interval, not the most maintenance.
How to build a PM program
- List and rank assets by criticality — what happens if it fails?
- Choose tasks and intervals from manufacturer recommendations, regulations and your own failure history.
- Write task lists so every technician does the job the same way.
- Schedule — build the maintenance schedule and assign responsibility.
- Execute through [work orders](/glossary/work-order) — record what was done, parts, time and findings.
- Measure — PM compliance (planned jobs done on time), MTBF, MTTR, downtime and cost.
- Adjust — lengthen intervals where nothing is ever found, shorten them where failures still occur.
Why PM depends on a good asset register
You cannot service what you cannot find. PM programs fail quietly when equipment has moved, the schedule points to a retired asset, or the history lives in a separate spreadsheet. Linking PM to the asset register — with tags so a technician can scan the right asset — keeps schedules, history and location in one place.
How Asetavo supports preventive maintenance
Asetavo's maintenance module (Business plan) holds recurring PM schedules per asset, work orders with status, assignee, cost and parts, calibration records, and the full service history on each asset's profile. Technicians can scan an asset's QR, barcode, NFC or RFID tag to find it and its history.
