In today's Machine Age, every business is wholly or partially dependent on equipment to carry out its activities. But with time, this equipment gets depreciated and loses its performance. Keeping this concern in view, smart businesses regularly spend money on Equipment Maintenance to ensure consistent performance and increase its lifespan as well.

The best way to start Equipment Maintenance is by planning the whole maintenance process in advance, like time of maintenance, total cost involved, tools required to do the maintenance job and duration of the maintenance process, and so forth. The primary benefit of Planned Maintenance is that it helps you keep a check on equipment and rectify faults at early stages before they grow into much bigger headaches.

Equipment Maintenance can be broken into four types depending upon the current situation. The first one is Preventive Maintenance (PM). In this maintenance mechanism, you can foresee common equipment-related problems and make changes to a system to avoid them. It is usually done under the guidance of experts, and is beneficial in decreasing downtime and availing consistence performance.

The second type is Predictive Maintenance (PdM). This maintenance involves checking the current system health (efficiency check) and identifies areas where problems could occur in the future. The commonly used techniques are Vibration Analysis, ultrasound, oil analysis, wear-particle analysis and thermography.

Corrective Maintenance (CM) is the third type. It is a retroactive strategy used when any failure or fault occurs in the system. The basic objective behind this maintenance is to correct the fault, with less emphasis on cost.

The last type is Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM). This is the latest maintenance technique, which involves continuous improvement of maintenance programs in the most cost-effective terms and in a technically feasible manner. RCM focuses itself on past failure/maintenance history, and emphasizes on functional importance of system components.