Breakdown Maintenance: An Ultimate Guide

Equipment reliability, facility safety, and efficiency are important goals for many businesses. Breakdown maintenance is a well-known approach among various maintenance strategies available to achieve these objectives. Although this strategy is not ideal for all facilities and equipment types, it is commonly used for non-business-critical equipment and parts and components that are inexpensive to replace or non-repairable.

Breakdown maintenance focuses on repairing equipment only after it fails. While this approach may initially seem counterintuitive compared to more proactive methods, it has specific applications and benefits that make it appropriate to use in certain situations.

This article is a comprehensive guide to breakdown maintenance, exploring its definition, different types, and pros and cons. This guide also discusses how LLumin’s Computerized Maintenance Management Software (CMMS+) can help you manage a breakdown maintenance approach better. By the end of this page, you will understand more about how this approach can fit into your overall maintenance strategy.

What is Breakdown Maintenance?

Breakdown maintenance is a strategy that involves performing maintenance after equipment has failed, which can be either planned or unplanned. Organizations often use this approach for non-essential, low-cost, or disposable assets where a more proactive maintenance strategy would be less cost-effective. 

While breakdown maintenance can initially reduce maintenance costs by deferring action until necessary, it can lead to higher costs, increased downtime, safety risks, and reduced operational visibility and efficiency. A more proactive maintenance approach is recommended when costs, downtime, and management spiral out of control.

Types of Breakdown Maintenance

As previously stated, breakdown maintenance can be both scheduled and unscheduled. We’ve reviewed these types below to help you apply them more effectively. The primary types of breakdown maintenance are:

• Run-to-Failure (Planned): In a planned, run-to-failure approach, equipment can operate simply until it breaks down. This process is anticipated, and maintenance plans are made for repair or replacement. This will involve stocking necessary spare parts and ensuring the availability of maintenance personnel. This approach is common when managing non-business-critical equipment, when the costs of breakdowns and downtime are low, and when planned repairs can be managed without larger issues. 
• Emergency (Unplanned): In emergency or breakdown maintenance situations, equipment failures occur unexpectedly, requiring a company to respond quickly to restore functionality and reduce downtime. Emergency maintenance can cause major disruptions in daily operations and, even worse, have serious consequences, such as safety risks and significant production losses. 

When to Use Breakdown Maintenance

It is arguably true that breakdown maintenance is not ideal for many facilities. However, companies commonly opt for breakdown maintenance when the pros outweigh the cons in terms of cost. When the upfront expense of proactive maintenance outweighs the benefits, breakdown maintenance can seem like the right choice. It can also seem like the right approach when managing infrequently used equipment.

However, while this reactive approach may appear to save money initially, research shows that these gains are short-lived. Inevitably, a lack of visibility, planning, and control over maintenance requirements will lead to unintended consequences over the long term.

How to Perform Breakdown Maintenance

Suppose your organization intends to rely on breakdown maintenance for several assets instead of just a few. In that case, you should consider how effective your maintenance management approach is in reducing the possibility of operational disruptions, increased safety risks, costs, etc.

If you need to improve your approach, your organization should plan ahead and determine how much manpower, equipment, materials, tools, and other supplies it will require to respond quickly and effectively to developing issues. 

Distinctions should also be made when you include using a CMMS rather than manually tracking and recording your efforts. We’ve gone over them both in greater detail below.