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Preventative maintenance inspection (PMI) is integral to your company’s Preventive Maintenance program. In diagnosing potential issues, subsiding equipment breakdowns, reducing costly repairs, minimizing accidents, and firefighting asset downtime, PMIs prove to be a low-cost and high-reward practice.
In fact, studies suggest that companies with a PM plan highly focused on preventative maintenance inspections can boost their operational efficacy significantly. However, conducting successful maintenance inspections requires facility managers to consider several aspects; What does a thorough inspection entail? How critical is PMI to your business? What are the essentials of a preventative maintenance inspection program? What is the ideal PMI frequency for your organization?
Answers to all these perplexing questions will help you devise a successful PMI strategy. Let’s start.
What Are Preventive Maintenance Inspections?
Preventive Maintenance Inspection, shortly known as PMI, is a systematic process of evaluating the equipment’s current condition to pinpoint the impending performance deficiencies and hints of degradation. The ultimate goal is to prevent the equipment and assets from breaking down and keep them running at maximum efficiency all year round.
All the bounded and critical assets, including electrical system, compressed air lines, access panels, air intake, and safety equipment are scrupulously inspected for proper operation. Based on this health checkup, facility inspectors provide scope for maintenance, identify the areas for improvement and utilize this intel for recommending necessary maintenance. Timely scheduled preventative maintenance inspection also determines the tools, materials, and labor needed to perform maintenance work and keep the equipment in good working condition.
Why Are Preventive Maintenance Inspections Important For Your Organization?

Meticulously conducted inspection is the first step in making any preventive maintenance plan successful. Facility managers inspect the equipment, suggest suitable maintenance work, and alter the current maintenance schedule for the inspected equipment. Mostly asset-intensive organizations deploy a CMMS or EAM solution to support their inspections and the preventive maintenance strategy.
Key Benefits of Preventive Maintenance Inspection:
Facility managers can take advantage of the principles of preventive maintenance inspection to unlock various benefits.
- Preventive maintenance inspections microstudy the equipment condition and performance to detect potential problems and schedule preventive maintenance timely.
- Performing preventive inspections minimizes the risk of asset downtime, failures, and accidents, reducing maintenance and repair costs.
- Preventive maintenance inspection enhances the efficiency of your organization’s maintenance planning efforts.
- Careful inspections help your organization devise a strategic POA (Plan of Action) for preventive maintenance tasks and activities.
- Through preventive inspections, facility managers ensure the assets are not undermaintained towards their end-of-life period.
- The data gathered by the maintenance inspectors dictates the required material, labor, and other resources necessary to perform the preventative maintenance.
- Routine inspections ensure that your organization’s critical assets remain operational at the optimal level.
- PMI, through the guided maintenance work, increases the asset reliability and extends the lifespan of the equipment and facilities.
In a nutshell, every asset-intensive organization should schedule regular inspections of their critical assets to stimulate productivity and apply preventive maintenance duly.
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Standard Operational Procedures For a Preventive Maintenance Program / What Are The Essentials of a Preventive Maintenance Program?
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- An inspection toolkit equipped with all the essential tools, including an industrial stethoscope, torch, infrared thermometer, mirrors, stroboscope, and vibration pen, should be readily available for timely inspections.
- The condition-monitoring routes must cover all necessary inspections.
- The guards and other protective equipment should be removable to inspect belts, couplings, and chains.
- The oil containers, base bolts, and gauges must be clean and spill-free to streamline the inspection process.
- The maintenance inspectors and technicians must be well-trained.
3 Stellar Tips For Successful Preventive Maintenance Inspections
While the SOPs stated above lay the foundation for a successful inspection, they are insufficient to achieve optimum operational maintenance. Implement these three tips within your strategy to gain maximum value from PMI efforts:- Integrate a CMMS or EAM Solution for Preventive Maintenance Tasks
- Not considering users as part of the selection process.
- Implementing complex CMMS software.
- Hesitation to adopt modern technology.
- Create Preventive Maintenance Checklists
- Bridge The Gap Between PMI & Corrective Maintenance With Automation
How Frequently Should Your Organization Schedule Preventive Maintenance Inspections?
Apparently, the PMI approach is relatively straightforward over a reactive approach. However, prior to an immediately obvious issue, deciding what to inspect, when to inspect, and how often it should get inspected can be confusing. Your organization’s facility managers can go both overboard and underboard with PMIs. To avoid this cumbersome situation, your company must create an ideal inspection frequency. Now determining inspection frequency requires careful study of the equipment Failure Developing Period.
The Failure Developing Period (FDP), also known as Pf Curve, is the duration from when the facility managers can detect a failure until it causes a breakdown. Here, failure is referred to as the signs of problems in a piece of equipment while it operates correctly. For instance, a manufacturing plant has visible signs of metal fatigue, corrosion, and general surface degradation but is still producing the required units. This situation is what we term “failure,” and the time difference between the equipment failure and breakdown is termed “FDP.”
Once the facility managers have the FDP sorted out, obtaining the ideal PMI frequency becomes as easy as dividing the FDP by 2. Taking the same manufacturing plant example, let’s say the maintenance inspectors reported the issues with the manufacturing plant at 5 am. The plant broke down at 5 pm 6 days later, giving us an FDP of 156 hours. As per the rule of thumb, we’ll divide this FDP by 2, giving us an inspection frequency of 78 days.
Conclusion: Inspections Made Easy With The NonStop Suite!
Preventative maintenance inspection enables your organization to unleash opportunities for improvement and embrace preventive maintenance in its operations. However, it’s a tedious process that requires a carefully devised strategy and advanced inspection tools. To streamline your company’s PMI workflow, partner with the NonStop Suite!
The NonStop Suite is a comprehensive package of smart solutions for all your company’s maintenance needs. Features like dynamic e-forms, On-The-Go Asset Management, NFC asset tagging system, GxP & ISO Compliance, and NC-CAPA Capabilities amplifies the performance of your organization’s maintenance crew. Every PMI-related task, including documentation, checklist creation, metrics & analytics generation, maintenance work order processing, facility inspection, and corrective action reporting, becomes hassle-free, swift, and mobilized.
If you want to unlock these advantages for your company while inducing automation into your PM strategy, consult with the NonStop Group today or book a free product tour
