Breakdown Maintenance (Reactive Maintenance)

What is Breakdown Maintenance?

Breakdown Maintenance, also known as reactive maintenance or run-to-failure maintenance, is a maintenance strategy in which repairs or replacements are performed only after equipment has failed or broken down. No maintenance tasks are proactively scheduled or performed before failure.

Equipment is run until it stops working, and then actions are taken to repair it and restore it to operating condition.

Under a breakdown maintenance approach, maintenance personnel wait until a machine or system suffers a malfunction, fault, or complete failure that halts operations. Then, they respond, troubleshoot the issue, and perform required repairs or replacements to rectify the failure.

This may involve replacing worn parts, fixing broken components, or adjusting to restore functionality and return the asset to service.

Breakdown maintenance is unplanned and unscheduled by nature, as failures can occur randomly based on actual equipment conditions and stresses. Maintenance is thus a largely reactive function focused on quickly responding to and resolving breakdowns to minimize downtime. Maintenance resources and budgets are expended mainly on time and materials required for urgent repairs.

Breakdown maintenance can be applied as a deliberate strategy for low-critical assets that are unlikely to fail or are non-essential to operations. It may also be used for old, obsolete, or hard-to-maintain equipment.

However, it is more frequently a reactive default approach for organizations lacking the resources, data, or maturity to adopt a more planned maintenance strategy.

Maintenance Types

Breakdown maintenance is part of several other maintenance strategies that include:

1. Preventive Maintenance:
   • Performing regular, scheduled maintenance activities based on time or usage intervals to prevent failures and extend equipment life. Includes inspections, lubrication, calibrations, adjustments, and parts replacements.
2. Predictive Maintenance:
   • Continuously monitoring equipment condition and performance data to detect and correct emerging failure risks before breakdown occurs. Utilizes techniques like vibration analysis, infrared thermography, oil analysis, and acoustic monitoring.
3. Condition-Based Maintenance:
   • Scheduling maintenance activities based on actual equipment conditions determined by periodic or continuous monitoring and assessment. Triggers repairs when pre-defined condition thresholds indicating imminent failure are exceeded.
4. Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM):
   • A comprehensive, risk-based approach that optimizes preventive and predictive maintenance tasks based on equipment failure modes, effects, and criticality analysis to improve reliability cost-effectively.
5. Total Productive Maintenance (TPM):
   • An organization-wide approach that empowers operators to perform autonomous maintenance while improving equipment maintainability to maximize overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).

Data and Illustration: WorkTrek

While breakdown maintenance focuses solely on reacting to and repairing failures after they occur, the other strategies all involve some degree of proactive inspection, servicing, and parts replacement to prevent or mitigate failures before they cause breakdowns.

When should you use Breakdown Maintenance?

Breakdown maintenance can be appropriate in specific situations:

1. Non-Critical Assets:
   • For equipment whose failure does not significantly impact production, safety, environment or other key objectives, the costs of preventive or predictive maintenance may outweigh the benefits. Running to failure may be economical.
2. Redundant Systems:
   • For assets with 100% redundancy or backup systems that can seamlessly carry the load when the primary asset fails, breakdowns may have minimal consequences that don’t justify scheduled maintenance.
3. Disposable or Obsolete Equipment:
   • Investing in proactive maintenance may not provide a worthwhile return for assets near the end of their useful life that will soon be replaced. Running to failure and replacement may be most cost-effective.
4. Unpredictable Failure Patterns:
   • For complex assets lacking accurate failure data and history, the inability to predict failure timing and effects may make scheduled maintenance impractical and inefficient compared to reactive repairs.
5. Stable, Low-Stress Operating Conditions:
   • Equipment operating consistently well below design limits in a controlled environment may have a very low likelihood of failure, making the costs and risks of breakdown maintenance tolerable.

Data and Illustration: WorkTrek

However, a reactive breakdown maintenance strategy entails significant risks and costs for most physical assets essential to production or operations. A more proactive and systematic approach is usually warranted.

Benefits and Drawbacks of Breakdown Maintenance

The main benefits of breakdown maintenance include:

1. Lower Upfront Costs:
   • Reactive maintenance minimizes investment in labor, tools, technology, and processes required to assess equipment conditions, plan maintenance, and manage schedules.
2. Less Frequent Interventions:
   • Running equipment to failure results in fewer total maintenance tasks and production interruptions than performing time—or condition-based preventive work.
3. Simpler Planning and Scheduling:
   • An unplanned, reactive approach to maintenance requires less administrative overhead to forecast, plan, schedule, and track work orders and maintenance resources.
4. Fewer Spare Parts Required:
   • Stocking only the parts and materials required for a limited range of common repairs rather than a wide range of preventive replacements reduces inventory costs and complexity.

Data and Illustration: WorkTrek

However, breakdown maintenance has significant potential drawbacks:

1. Unplanned Downtime:
   • Equipment failures can occur at unexpected and inopportune times, halting dependent production or operations for extended periods and incurring opportunity costs.
2. Higher Repair Costs:
   • Failures allowed to occur may cause more extensive secondary damage and require costlier repairs than proactively maintained equipment. Expedited parts, overtime labor, and production losses rapidly accumulate.
3. Shorter Equipment Life:
   • Allowing failures increases wear and stress and reduces asset useful life compared to proactive servicing. This increases total lifecycle costs and capital replacement frequency.
4. Increased Safety and Environmental Risks:
   • Unexpected equipment failures pose more significant risks of worker injuries, environmental spills, fires, and other incidents than proactively maintained assets.
5. Unreliable Production and Service Quality:
   • Assets prone to breakdowns cause production and service delays and quality issues that impact customer satisfaction, loyalty, and brand reputation.

Data and Illustration: WorkTrek

In most cases, a reactive breakdown maintenance approach proves less efficient and effective over time than a well-designed, planned, and scheduled preventive, predictive, and corrective maintenance program.