The consequences of reactive maintenance are multiple and often invisible until they’re quantified.
In most industrial plants, daily operations include some kind of emergency. In maintenance, this scenario entails costs, sometimes very significant ones.
Often, technical service teams have to divide their time 70/30: 70% dedicated to reactive interventions, while only 30% is oriented toward prevention. This is the reality; the priority is not to avoid failures, but to solve them once they’ve already caused a shutdown, a logistical emergency, or a crisis with the client.
This situation, although common, is not sustainable in the long term.
The consequences of reactive maintenance are multiple and often invisible until they’re quantified.
A sudden breakdown implies:
- Technicians’ overtime and immediate availability, often outside working hours.
- Urgent shipments of spare parts, with transport surcharges.
- Unplanned travel, with added costs in allowances and nighttime or weekend hours.
- Losses due to plant shutdown that can last for weeks.
- Penalties for service non-compliance (SLA), especially in inter-supplier environments (tier suppliers).
- Impact on end-client trust, who perceives an unstable service.
Moreover, critical equipment, such as tank agitators or 24/7 mixing systems, usually don’t have immediate spare parts available. When they fail, not only does production stop, but a domino effect is generated that can affect the entire logistics chain.
It’s important to understand that indirect costs—loss of productivity, reputation, and client relationships—are usually much higher than direct costs.
Reversing the Imbalance with a Maintenance Plan
Implementing a preventive maintenance plan is highly recommended and allows this imbalance to be reversed. As manufacturers, our equipment is sized for process requirements and product type, and always comes with specific recommendations.
At Vak Kimsa we work with a progressive and realistic approach, which combines:
- Actual operating hours and operating conditions.
- Breakdown history and detected trends.
- Feedback from plant operators.
- Periodic inspections with data collection.
This approach facilitates the implementation of standardized protocols for each type of equipment, reduces variability, and improves technician training.
Many clients have managed to reduce their total technical service costs with this planned maintenance model. We’re talking about between 20% and 25%, thanks to better planning and the reduction of urgent interventions.
How to Measure Maintenance Efficiency
To ensure the effectiveness of a preventive plan, we use key indicators such as:
- MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures): indicates equipment reliability.
- MTTR (Mean Time To Repair): shows response capacity.
- % of preventive plan compliance: reflects consistency and discipline in execution.
- Number of serious incidents (by time periods according to equipment).
- Post-intervention satisfaction.
These indicators allow maintenance strategies to be adjusted and potential risks to be anticipated.
Recommendations to Get Started
For companies that haven’t yet taken the step toward planned maintenance, we recommend:
- Identify the equipment with the greatest impact in case of shutdown.
- Establish a minimum review routine, with simple forms.
- Involve the production team in symptom detection.
- Start small, but with continuity and record-keeping.
The most common mistakes are not having key spare parts, not documenting interventions, and not reviewing what «seems to be working.»
Want to stabilize costs, avoid emergencies, and gain reliability?
Let’s start with 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹. We’ll help you define a preventive maintenance plan adapted to your plant.
Contact our TSS – Technical Support Service!
