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A PM Audit Is Not A Preventive Maintenance Effectiveness Audit
A PM Audit Is Not A Preventive Maintenance Effectiveness Audit
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M a n a g e m e n t , I n d u s t r i a l M a i n te n a n ce S t ra te g y a n d E n te r p r i s e A s s e t
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i s N o t a Preve n t i ve M a i n te n a n ce E f fe c t i ve n e s s Au d i t
Many managers hope that by doing a PM Audit they will get the insights they need to fix
their PM program. You might be lucky, but if you want to fix your PM program it’s better to do
a PM Effectiveness Audit than a PM Audit.
The reply to the question asked below will help you understand the difference between a PM
Audit and a Preventive Maintenance Effectiveness Audit.
Just read your article on Preventive Maintenance Effectiveness and it is great! Maintenance
Effectiveness Audit Process (https://lifetime-reliability.com/faqs/faq-preventive-maintenance-
effectiveness-audit-process/).
Do you have a sample audit sheet template that has been used to audit PM’s on equipment?
If so, I’d love to see one. Thanks.
Hello Jason,
One thing you need to be aware of is, a Preventive Maintenance (PM) Audit is not the same as
a PM Effectiveness Audit. A PM Audit implies that you review your PM program. But your
request is about auditing individual equipment items. To audit the usefulness and coverage
of your equipment PM’s, you could develop a Reliability Checklist to audit each asset. Here is
a sample PDF Mechanical Equipment Reliability Checklist (https://lifetime-reliability.com/wp-
content/uploads/2021/05/Reliability_Checklist_Mechanical_Plant.pdf), and a sample PDF
Mobile Equipment Reliability Checklist (https://lifetime-reliability.com/wp-
content/uploads/2021/05/Reliability_Checklist_Mobile_Plant.pdf).
Preventive Maintenance effectiveness has two aspects. One is whether each Preventive
Maintenance activity eliminates the possibility of equipment breakdowns. The second is how
much your entire PM program contributes to operational success, e.g. operating profit,
workplace safety, plant uptime, etc.
Situations that benefit from Preventive Maintenance include where parts will:
over-stress, (like fasteners, parts suffering high bending, torsion or shear forces, etc.)
be contaminated during operation (like oil filters, fuel filters, air filters, etc.)
wear-out (like brake pads, pump impellers and volutes, mechanical seals, etc.)
degrade from “time aging” (like rubber parts, V-seals, O-rings, etc.)
degrade because of service conditions (they suffer high temperatures, they suffer
abrasion or erosion, etc.)
fatigue from accumulated stress in their microstructures (like moving parts, vibrated
components, parts under impact loads, etc.)
collect dirt, rubbish, dust, etc. that will cause damage if not cleaned away in time
What is Preventive Maintenance? What is a Preventive
Maintenance Audit? What is Preventive Maintenance
Effectiveness?
American National Standards Institute (ANSI) defines Preventive Maintenance as, “the
planned maintenance of plant infrastructure and equipment with the goal of improving
equipment life by preventing excess depreciation and impairment. This maintenance
includes, but is not limited to, adjustments, cleaning, lubrication, repairs, replacements, and
the extension of equipment life.”
The definition of audit, from ‘ISO 19011 Guidelines for quality and/or environmental
management systems audits’ is, “systematic, independent and documented process for
obtaining audit evidence, and evaluating it objectively to determine the extent that the audit
criteria are fulfilled.” Audit criteria is defined as, “set of policies, procedures or requirements.”
In the online Oxford Dictionary, effectiveness is defined as, “the degree to which something is
successful in producing a desired result; success.”
Doing a Preventive Maintenance Audit
In a Preventive Maintenance Audit, you start with the set of Preventive Maintenance policies,
procedures and requirements specified by the company. Then you obtain evidence from the
audited workplace of how well their practices meet the prescribed policies, procedures and
requirements. A Preventive Maintenance Audit does not necessarily measure Preventive
Maintenance Effectiveness, i.e. the extent of success of Preventive Maintenance in delivering
its intended business purpose.
In a PM audit, you check that the PM program delivers all the requirements that the
organization stipulates must be done to its plant and equipment. You can have an ineffective
preventive maintenance program, but if you use and follow its procedures you will
successfully pass a PM audit, even though your plant and equipment are unreliable.
Start a PM Audit by gathering together the organization’s Maintenance Management Policy,
the equipment maintenance strategy, any preventive maintenance policy, the PM process, all
PM process procedures and requirements—requirements include the PM activities noted in
PM work orders. That is the first audit check—to find out if there is predetermined PM
strategy targeted to minimized operating risk in a specified and documented PM program. If
there is no formal risk removing PM strategy for each equipment item, then both the PM
program that is in use (there is always a PM program. Even if no PM work orders exist, that is
the PM program), and the entire Maintenance Management philosophy behind it, are
deficient of sound risk management logic.
The PM audit reviews if the PM philosophy, program, and work done in the operation keep
the assets reliable. You develop a tabulated checklist of the issues and requirements to be
inspected and confirmed as being in practice. For a randomly selected, statistically correct
sample size of equipment in the PM program, you go and check if their service life history
contains all the intended preventive maintenance requirements on your list.
In an operation with 3,000 equipment items in the PM program, the sample size is
proportionately smaller than an operation with 300 equipment items in their PM program. To
have a high confidence that the sample size reflects the whole population in a PM program
for 3,000 separate equipment items, you need to check the service history of 150 pieces of
equipment (5%). In a population of 300, you would need to check 100 individual equipment
items (33%). A PM Audit that is not statistically correct in its sampling is rubbish, and its
recommendations should not be believed.
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