You may have heard talk of the difference between preventative and reactive maintenance. As the terms imply, preventative maintenance involves preventing problems before they occur, and reactive maintenance involves waiting until a problem arises and being forced to fix it when it does.
Preventative maintenance is generally the better option; after all, would you wait until blue smoke is pouring out of your car before you change your oil? That would be the reactive way to handle the situation. The preventative solution would be to change your oil before something like that happens.
Now, there are a couple of ways you could do that. You could change your oil based on a schedule: after a certain number of miles, perhaps, or after a certain time interval has passed. But that might cause you to change your oil more or less often than necessary. That’s not ideal, because if you’re changing it overly often you’re wasting time and money on the process, and if you’re not changing it enough, it’s hard on your car in the long term.
The solution to this is a subcategory of preventative maintenance called condition-based maintenance. In this sort of system, you keep an eye on the condition of your oil, either by having it checked manually or via a sensor in your car, and you change it only as often as needed. By changing your oil only when it needs to be changed, you’re minimizing the impact of this necessary process on your ability to use your car.
How the IoT Enables Condition-Based Preventative Maintenance
The “Internet of Things”, or IoT, is the network between “smart” objects, such as the connection between a smart fridge and its owner’s smartphone. This interconnectivity between inanimate objects allows for CBM where previously it was only a dream. CBM used to be limited to high-volume facilities and factories that could afford complex sensors, but in the modern, connected world, almost anything can be a candidate for condition-based maintenance.
CBM is an optimal way of addressing most types of maintenance needs. By tackling issues as needed, not before and not after, you’re able to minimize the amount of downtime on your systems. That’s because you’re not doing unnecessary maintenance, and you’re not having to deal with the fallout of unprevented disasters. The increasing accessibility of this trend can, hopefully, make all of our systems that much more efficient.
One Call To Trillium Facility Solutions Does It All
Outsourcing facility maintenance and management can save you money while you leverage the expertise and support from experienced professionals. As your business and facility management needs change, we’ll be right there with you to help balance your internal operations with our custom facility solutions.
Get in touch with any of our amazing team members who are standing by ready to serve! Call (844) 818-5713 to learn more.
