Preventive maintenance

The technical meaning of maintenance involves functional checks, servicing, repairing or replacing of necessary devices, equipment, machinery, building infrastructure, and supporting utilities in industrial, business, governmental, and residential installations. Over time, this has come to include multiple wordings that describe various cost-effective practices to keep equipment operational; these activities take place either before or after a failure. Together, these functions are referred to as Maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO). MRO is also used for Maintenance, repair and operations. The technical meaning of maintenance involves functional checks, servicing, repairing or replacing of necessary devices, equipment, machinery, building infrastructure, and supporting utilities in industrial, business, governmental, and residential installations. Over time, this has come to include multiple wordings that describe various cost-effective practices to keep equipment operational; these activities take place either before or after a failure. Together, these functions are referred to as Maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO). MRO is also used for Maintenance, repair and operations. Over time, the terminology of maintenance and MRO has begun to become standardized. The United States Department of Defense uses the following definitions: Maintenance is strictly connected to the utilization stage of the product or technical system, in which the concept of maintainability must be included. In this scenario, maintainability is considered as the ability of an item, under stated conditions of use, to be retained in or restored to a state in which it can perform its required functions, using prescribed procedures and resources. In some domains like aircraft maintenance, terms maintenance, repair and overhaul also include inspection, rebuilding, alteration and the supply of spare parts, accessories, raw materials, adhesives, sealants, coatings and consumables for aircraft maintenance at the utilization stage. In international civil aviation maintenance means: This definition covers all activities for which aviation regulations require issuance of a maintenance release document (aircraft certificate of return to service – CRS). The basic types of maintenance falling under MRO include: Architectural conservation employs MRO to preserve, rehabilitate, restore, or reconstruct historical structures with stone, brick, glass, metal, and wood which match the original constituent materials where possible, or with suitable polymer technologies when not. Preventive maintenance (PM) is 'a routine for periodically inspecting' with the goal of 'noticing small problems and fixing them before major ones develop.' Ideally, 'nothing breaks down.' The main goal behind PM is for the equipment to make it from one planned service to the next planned service without any failures caused by fatigue, neglect, or normal wear (preventable items), which Planned Maintenance and Condition Based Maintenance help to achieve by replacing worn components before they actually fail. Maintenance activities include partial or complete overhauls at specified periods, oil changes, lubrication, minor adjustments, and so on. In addition, workers can record equipment deterioration so they know to replace or repair worn parts before they cause system failure.