Preventive maintenance is an important strategy in facility management that helps you improve the lifespan of equipment assets and reduce downtime.

Many modern facilities opt for preventive maintenance strategies to reduce costs and ensure operations efficiency.

If you also wish to implement preventive maintenance for your facility, it requires digital tools like field service management software. Learn more on how FSM solutions empower facility managers to optimize operations and mitigate risks effectively for their facilities.

How Does Preventive Maintenance Help for Facility Management?

Preventive maintenance works on the simple principle – it addresses potential issues before they escalate into major problems.

Unlike reactive maintenance, which responds to breakdowns after they occur, preventive maintenance focuses on scheduled inspections, repairs, and replacements to prevent failures. This leads to overlooked tasks and inefficiencies.

FSM software helps collect, track, and manage equipment or asset data, using which, it gains insights into how you operate them. Then, by leveraging historical data and predictive analytics, FSM software enables facility managers to anticipate equipment failures. Now, using this data, FSM software will further optimize maintenance schedules and allocate resources efficiently.

How to Implement Preventive Maintenance Using FSM Software for Facility Management?

Digitization of operations is key to implementing preventive maintenance. We have shared four FSM-enabled workflows that will help you get started:

1. Inspection and Maintenance Scheduling

Scheduling and dispatching are critical activities that FSM software helps streamline and automate facility management. The same can be done for preventive maintenance tasks too.

Now, regular inspections are essential for identifying potential issues and ensuring compliance with safety regulations in facilities. FSM software automates inspection scheduling by generating recurring inspection tasks based on predefined frequencies and priorities. It sends automated reminders to technicians and supervisors to ensure the timely completion of tasks as per regulatory requirements.

FSM software also helps with condition-based maintenance — in this, when certain predefined thresholds or anomalies are detected, FSM software triggers maintenance alerts or work orders automatically.

2. Integration with IoT and Use of Predictive Analytics

FSM software integrates with IoT sensors and devices to collect data on asset health, energy consumption, and environmental conditions. Then, it uses predictive analytics on both historical and real-time data to identify patterns, anomalies, and potential failure points. In case of deviations from best practices, it kicks off predictive maintenance workflows and interventions before issues escalate.

3. Manage Equipment or Asset Vendors

An important maintenance activity is to ensure you have spare parts readily available to fix any downtime issues. For this, you must have streamlined relations with your vendors.

FSM software facilitates vendor management by maintaining a vendor database, tracking vendor performance, and automating vendor communication.

For example, it helps streamline the procurement process by generating requests for quotes (RFQs), comparing vendor quotes, and issuing purchase orders to selected vendors — all without much manual intervention. Additionally, FSM software also integrates with vendor portals or external systems. This enables seamless collaboration and communication between facility managers and vendors throughout the maintenance process.

4. FSM Helps with Energy Management

Energy consumption is a significant operational cost for facilities. Any inefficiency here means more electricity bills, environmental impact, and reduced profits.

FSM software integrates with energy management systems and meters to monitor energy consumption in real time. Then, using predictive analytics will help you find ways to reduce usage and identify areas of over-consumption. This proactive approach not only reduces operating costs but also promotes sustainability and environmental stewardship.

Important Things to Consider before Adopting Preventive Maintenance for Facilities Using FSM

Prioritize critical assets: you need not collect data from everywhere. Prioritize preventive maintenance tasks based on asset criticality, operational impact, and risk assessment to allocate resources effectively and minimize downtime.

Standardize maintenance procedures: create standard operating procedures, checklists, and workflows across facilities to ensure consistency and compliance in maintenance operations.

Train technicians to align with data: Provide comprehensive training to field service technicians on FSM software usage and preventive maintenance procedures. Alert them when they deviate while operating the equipment as per safety protocols. This small step will enhance their efficiency and effectiveness in maintenance tasks.

Use Zuper to Implement Best Practices for Predictive Maintenance in Facility Management

Zuper is a field service management software that enables your facility data analytics, and automation features to implement predictive maintenance strategies — book a demo to learn more.