Preventive maintenance is performed with some degree of regularity and “by the book.” In other words, preventive maintenance is often part of a multi-year maintenance plan and follows a set schedule. Compare it with your regular check-up at the dentist for convenience. Preventive maintenance is an important activity, because you can’t start it early enough. The disadvantage of preventive maintenance is that you never know whether a part will need to be replaced faster or slower than the guideline states. But we have another solution to that …
In predictive maintenance, we use the installations’ data. We analyze this data to find out what the actual condition of the machine is. So with predictive maintenance, we don’t focus on the set replacement intervals but look at the real component’s status. The same actually happens when you go to the dentist on your own appointment to fill a cavity. The advantage of predictive maintenance is that the investment in each component is better utilized.