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. Similar to your regular checkup at the dentist. Preventive maintenance is an important activity because it’s never too early to detect potential problems. But the disadvantage of preventive maintenance is that you never know whether a part needs replacement sooner or later than the guideline indicates. 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 thing actually happens when you go to the dentist to have a cavity filled. The advantage of predictive maintenance is that the investment in each component is better utilized.