A warehouse worker in a high-visibility vest smiles while holding a tablet, standing in front of shelves filled with organized boxes and inventory items.
A warehouse worker in a high-visibility vest smiles while holding a tablet, standing in front of shelves filled with organized boxes and inventory items.

Introduction

Reactive maintenance represents one of the most commonly employed maintenance approaches in metal manufacturing, including preventive and predictive maintenance. 

In this article, we will explore in more detail what reactive maintenance is, when and why it is used, how to best perform it, its advantages and disadvantages, as well as the comparison between planned and reactive maintenance. 

In addition, we will provide you with a number of real-life examples of effective reactive maintenance in metal manufacturing plants.

What Is Reactive Maintenance?

Unlike in prescriptive and preventive maintenance where equipment failure is addressed before it occurs, in reactive maintenance, the equipment is returned to standard operating conditions only once the failure occurs. It is also commonly referred to as breakdown repair or, simply, repair.

While running purely reactive-based maintenance in metal manufacturing plants is not a viable long-term solution due to potentially catastrophic failures and resulting downtimes, it is still a perfectly viable strategy for certain areas and situations. 

It is often said that the ideal ratio of preventive-to-reactive maintenance is 80-20 [1], which means that even in the best-performing manufacturing plants, the ideal strategy would still involve 20% reactive maintenance, showing its potential. 

Considering how rare ideal scenarios are, it is safe to say that, for many metal manufacturing plants, reactive maintenance still plays a big role. 

In most cases, deservedly so.

It should also be pointed out that just because reactive maintenance entails reacting to failures only when they occur, it should not be equated with sitting on the collective hands and just waiting for failures to occur. But we will get to this later when we describe different types of reactive maintenance.

What Are the Benefits of Reactive Maintenance?

The mere reactive maintenance definition provides a number of hints as to where its strengths may lie. 

Lower Costs

Due to its reactive nature, this type of maintenance does not require any significant upfront costs. 

For one, there is a reduced need for maintenance staff, especially when compared with companies where preventive maintenance is particularly emphasized and requires a number of technicians and engineers to be on call 24/7. 

Additionally, preventive maintenance entails a lot of planned downtime during which parts are replaced, various machines are inspected, and other maintenance checklists are completed. In metal manufacturing plants, these downtimes are extremely costly and if the strategy is too preventive-heavy, these can add up quickly. 

Finally, preventive maintenance also requires the manufacturing plants to constantly be stacked on every possible spare part, regardless of the condition of the existing, perfectly working part. In reactive maintenance, typically, only the most critical spare parts are kept on hand so as to allow quick reactions in situations when critical equipment fails. 

Simpler Planning

The reduced headcount of maintenance technicians and fewer regularly scheduled maintenance activities mean it is far simpler to plan the operation of a metal manufacturing plant. 

A plant that relies more on reactive maintenance does not have to employ an entire team of technicians and engineers. This is not only beneficial when it comes to the reduced costs (not as many people on the payroll), but also when it comes to organizing shifts, making sure their skills are complementary and replacing highly-trained staff if they leave the company.

Furthermore, reactive maintenance doesn’t require (as many) scheduled inspections, which often entail downtimes. With preventive maintenance, these scheduled downtimes need to be organized at the least disruptive hours and around different teams, manufacturing stands and lines.

Immediate Response

Critical failures always warrant an immediate response, regardless of what your plant’s preventive-to-reactive maintenance ratio is. However, in plants that are more reactive-heavy, the response teams tend to be quicker to act and organize simply because they’ve had more practice. Plus, in such plants, there is a better chance that the inventory will be better stocked with equipment, especially essential equipment. 

(One of the reasons why companies move onto preventive maintenance is to reduce the inventory they have to keep at hand).

When Is Reactive Maintenance Typically Employed?

Due to the relatively complex manufacturing process in the metal industry and the high costs of replacing failed equipment, it is generally considered short-sighted to run a purely reactive-based maintenance strategy, despite its aforementioned benefits.

However, there are circumstances and specific situations where reactive maintenance is the preferred strategy, either by choice or by circumstance. 

Non-Critical Equipment

By far, the most common use for reactive maintenance is in managing non-critical equipment. Since the downtime of such equipment or systems does not have a major impact on the overall production, it makes sense to save money by employing reactive as opposed to preventive maintenance. 

High Demand

There are also situations where there is demand for the highest possible levels of production. In such situations, preventive maintenance downtimes are not a luxury that the plants can afford and they choose to delay maintenance until a breakdown occurs or until the demands are met. There is a danger that this will result in increased wear or unexpected failures later, but it is a payoff that the manufacturing plants are prepared to handle.

Aging Equipment or Equipment Due for Replacement

It is not rare to find metal manufacturing plants using legacy equipment that has well surpassed its expected lifecycle. In such situations, preventive maintenance is less applicable due to the low predictability of how such aging equipment will behave even after regular maintenance. In such situations, metal manufacturing plants resort to reactive maintenance as a way to keep the equipment running as they prepare for upgrades or replacements.

Similarly, a manufacturing plant may decide to stop doing preventive maintenance on a piece of equipment that is due for replacement. In many cases, the replacement piece is already available for installation, but the plant wants to get as much as possible from the old equipment and effectively reduce the amount of work that the new piece will be doing initially.

Budget and Resource Constraints

Among the most common situations where reactive maintenance is (over)relied on is when the manufacturing plant is operating with a limited maintenance budget or where resources are strained. In such cases, the plant may choose to temporarily curb preventive maintenance and divert all of the maintenance resources into critical repairs. Once again, this is not the ideal long-term solution, but sometimes, the realities of running a metal manufacturing plant are simply like that.

Different Types of Reactive Maintenance

At a glance, it may seem that all reactive maintenance is the same – a piece of equipment breaks down, and the team is called up to fix the malfunctioning equipment. This is not the case. In fact, there are a few different types of reactive maintenance, all employed in different situations and for different reasons. 

Breakdown Maintenance

Breakdown maintenance is the type of reactive maintenance that we mentioned above and that most people have in mind when they are thinking about reactive maintenance. This type of maintenance is always unplanned and, in cases when the equipment that stopped working is critical for the metal manufacturing process, it is referred to as emergency maintenance. 

Production is shut down temporarily and all of the efforts are diverted into repairing the failure and enabling further production. 

This is considered the worst-case scenario and one of the major drawbacks of purely reactive maintenance. In preventive maintenance, such occurrences are made less frequent by predictive maintenance (more on this later).

Run-To-Failure Maintenance

Run-to-failure maintenance means that a piece of equipment will be running until it fails intentionally. In other words, the failure is planned and expected, but it makes sense to let it happen instead of addressing the failure preemptively. 

In most cases, this type of maintenance is only reserved for non-critical equipment in a metal manufacturing plant, usually not production-related. There are other situations in which this type of reactive maintenance is utilized. For instance, the plant may have already bought the replacement part, and it is readily available for replacement. 

In the majority of cases, the main reason for run-to-failure maintenance is cost-effectiveness. For example, the non-critical nature of equipment treated in this way and the ability to fix the issue promptly make it more cost-effective to continue production with such equipment than replacing it proactively. Additionally, classifying certain equipment under run-to-failure maintenance can free up assets with a higher criticality rating.

Corrective Maintenance

Corrective maintenance is the closest that reactive maintenance comes to preventive maintenance. Namely, this type of maintenance is done on an asset that presents defects but which is still in working condition. It involves making repairs on such an asset before it fails completely (which it inevitably will). Corrective maintenance can be planned in such a way as to be as non-disruptive to production as possible. 

Doing Reactive Maintenance the Right Way

Like any kind of maintenance, reactive maintenance can be done the wrong way or the right way. Considering the increased risks of failure that come from a reactive-heavy maintenance strategy, it is absolutely essential to do it properly. 

Determine Criticality Levels

It can be difficult to reduce the likelihood of downtimes if you are relying completely on reactive maintenance. However, this does not mean that you should not categorize your assets according to their criticality. 

For example, steel rolling mill gears will not have the same criticality level as your HVAC system. You will need to categorize the assets of your metal manufacturing plant and have a tiered inventory of your assets. 

This is an essential aspect of reactive maintenance as it will guide all of your subsequent decisions. 

Establish a Replacement Parts Management Strategy

When relying on reactive maintenance, the replacement parts are crucial aspects of improving response times and reducing downtime in cases of failures. Because of this, you will want to establish a replacement parts management strategy, which will include a number of aspects.

First of all, you will have to build a replacement parts inventory that will be built according to the aforementioned criticality tiering. In essence, you will need to identify critical components and parts that you will need to have at the ready 24/7. 

If, for reasons such as limited storage space or high costs of replacement parts, you are not able to build a complete replacement parts inventory (a twin plant-type situation), you need to make sure that you have good relationships with local vendors that will be willing and able to assist you immediately if the need arises. 

You should also do replacement parts allocation and tracking, especially if you operate a number of distributed manufacturing plants or subsidiaries. In such ecosystems, replacement parts tend to get misplaced or altogether forgotten, and you do not want to let that happen.

Establish and Maintain Skill Competencies

Since one of the reasons for relying on reactive maintenance is most likely the wish to reduce the maintenance staff headcount, you need to make sure the technicians and engineers you have on staff are able to handle everything (or at least the majority) that can happen. 

In other words, you need to take stock of all the competencies they will need to have to be able to handle any equipment failures. This means both hiring the right people and, perhaps even more importantly, providing regular training and practice runs that will ensure their skills do not become rusty and that they are able to handle any situation when it arises.  

Establish and Document Repair Standard Operating Procedures

All the inventory and all the skills in the world are not enough unless your metal manufacturing plant doesn’t have repair standard operating procedures (SOPs) in place. By establishing and clearly documenting SOPs, you will greatly increase the response times in cases of equipment failures. 

Everyone needs to be aware of their responsibilities and jobs at any time, where they can find the replacement parts and how they will approach repairing or replacing the equipment. 

If your reactive maintenance strategy involves external vendors, make sure that you have internal SOPs for getting them involved as well.

Moving From Reactive to Preventive and Predictive Maintenance

You have probably noticed that we have mentioned a number of drawbacks of reactive maintenance, especially purely reactive maintenance which we characterized as unsustainable in the long term. 

In fact, you would be hard-pressed to find a metal manufacturing plant that is 100% reliant on reactive maintenance. The majority, if not all of them, will also have a preventive maintenance layer in place to some extent. 

Preventive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance involves scheduled inspections, adjustments, and replacements of components based on criticality, predetermined schedule or their usage cycles. This approach aims to prevent equipment failures before they occur, reducing the need for reactive maintenance and minimizing situations in which metal manufacturing plants experience downtimes. 

The benefits of longer asset life, improved efficiency, and less downtime compared to reactive maintenance always have to be compared against the added expenses of hiring more maintenance staff, the time it takes to routinely maintain assets, and the regular downtimes required to do scheduled maintenance. 

For instance, in a metal manufacturing plant, preventive maintenance would involve regularly scheduled inspections and servicing of cutting machines on a quarterly basis to replace blades, check alignment, and ensure proper lubrication.

Predictive Maintenance

Predictive maintenance takes preventive maintenance to a whole other level by introducing real-time data and advanced analytic tools to predict when equipment failure is likely to occur. This approach uses condition-monitoring tools and techniques to assess the actual condition of machinery and perform maintenance only when necessary.

In the same hypothetical metal manufacturing plant we discussed earlier, predictive maintenance would involve using vibration sensors and temperature monitors on welding machines to detect anomalies. If the sensors indicate a potential problem, maintenance would be scheduled to address these particular issues before a failure occurs.

Additional upfront costs and staff training do come at a cost, but predictive maintenance comes with the added improved maintenance KPIs such as:

✅ Percent unscheduled downtime

✅ Unscheduled downtime losses

✅ Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)

✅ Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF)

✅ Mean Time to Failure (MTTF)

✅ Mean Time to Acknowledge (MTTA)

Schedule your free software demo, and let’s find out which strategy will work best for your metal manufacturing plant!

How LLumin Can Help

Regardless of what your reactive-to-preventive-to-predictive ratio is, LLumin’s software suite will help your team perform better. 

For maintenance teams that are almost entirely reactive, our work order management and inventory management software can help optimize maintenance team reactions and greatly reduce downtimes. 

LLumin also has a powerful suite for Preventive maintenance features functionalities such as condition-based maintenance, automated maintenance workflows and advanced data analytics which can result in decreasing unplanned workloads by as much as 42% within 12 months.

For metal manufacturing plants that are truly ready to be on the bleeding edge of technology, our Predictive Maintenance Software comes (in addition to everything included in the preventive suite) with the ability to aggregate data from machine sensors and apply condition-based workflows to execute immediate responses for optimal asset management.

Even if you simply want to learn how to improve your maintenance strategy, we’ve got you covered, too!

Frequently Asked Questions

What is reaction maintenance?

Reaction maintenance, more popularly known as reactive maintenance, is an approach where maintenance tasks are carried out only after an equipment failure has occurred.

What is another word for reactive maintenance?

Another word for reactive maintenance is corrective maintenance. 

What is reactive property maintenance?

Reactive maintenance involves addressing equipment that has failed, become ineffective, or sustained damage. The primary goal is to restore the equipment to its normal operating condition or replace it entirely.

What is the difference between corrective and reactive maintenance?

While corrective maintenance proactively addresses identified issues, reactive maintenance takes a hands-off approach until equipment failure occurs.

References

1 – https://managerplus.iofficecorp.com/blog/preventive-maintenance-goals

Chief Operating Officer at LLumin CMMS+

Karen Rossi is a seasoned operations leader with over 30 years of experience empowering software development teams and managing corporate operations. With a track record of developing and maintaining comprehensive products and services, Karen runs company-wide operations and leads large-scale projects as COO of LLumin.