Preventive maintenance

How it is used

Often shortened to PM. Robot makers give a PM schedule in the manual: greasing gearboxes, replacing batteries, checking cables and brakes. You schedule, carry out and record PM; it is the opposite of reactive maintenance, which fixes things after they fail.

Example sentences

1. The robots are due for preventive maintenance next week, so we'll swap the encoder batteries then.

2. Preventive maintenance takes time, but much less than an unplanned stop on the line.

Common collocations

• preventive maintenance schedule
• carry out preventive maintenance
• PM interval
• PM checklist

Related terms

• predictive maintenanceMaintenance planned from real condition data, such as vibration, temperature or motor current, so a part is serviced shortly before it is likely to fail.
• downtimeThe time a machine or line is not producing because of a breakdown, maintenance, a product changeover or missing material.
• lubricationAdding grease or oil to gears, bearings and other moving parts to reduce friction and wear and to make them last longer.
• spare partA replacement part kept in stock so that a broken or worn component, such as a motor, a sensor, a gripper finger or a fuse, can be changed quickly.
• lockout/tagoutA safety procedure in which a machine's energy sources are switched off, locked with a personal padlock and tagged, so nobody can restart it during maintenance.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

• preventive maintenance · Mechanical Engineering
• preventive maintenance · Industrial Engineering & Manufacturing

More terms: Maintenance and Troubleshooting

• troubleshoot
• fault
• alarm
• calibrate