CMMS for Preventive Maintenance: Replace Ad Hoc Fixes With a Plan That Generates Work Orders

McMain is the CMMS that turns preventive maintenance into a routine. You create a work slip once, and McMain generates the work orders on time, meter reading, running hours or another trigger. Preventive maintenance is part of the Lite plan already, so every McMain customer can replace ad hoc fixes with a plan from the first day.

Why reactive maintenance keeps teams stuck

A technical department that only repairs what breaks never gets ahead of the work. Each breakdown pushes planned jobs aside, and the planned jobs that are skipped cause the next breakdown. The way out is a plan that creates work orders by itself, so nobody has to remember the next inspection.

Research shows how far companies still are from that point. Only 28 percent describe their processes as fully planned and preventive, while 37 percent call them planned but reactive. A buyer who chooses McMain starts on the right side of that divide, because planning is built into the work slip.

What preventive maintenance saves compared with repairs after a breakdown

WtbE states that preventive maintenance often costs 30 to 50 percent less than repairs after a breakdown. Fourdata, a supplier, quotes AFIM research that up to 70 percent of breakdowns can be avoided with well structured preventive maintenance. Both figures come from sources with an interest in the topic, but they point in the same direction: planned work is cheaper than emergency work.

The saving is within reach. Preventive plans, inspections and a planning board are all included in Lite, and the cost reporting per asset and per work order shows what the plan delivers in your own numbers.

Step by step plan to start preventive maintenance in McMain

1. Start small and alive, as Symestic advises: put your critical installations in the system first.
2. Register work orders and breakdown reports for those installations.
3. Create one work slip per recurring job and attach a trigger.
4. Let the system generate the work orders and divide them on the planning board.
5. Add spare parts once the first three steps run smoothly.

Symestic recommends exactly this order: critical installations first, then work orders and breakdown reports, then preventive maintenance, then parts. Following it means that the plan grows from real data instead of from an ambitious spreadsheet that nobody maintains.

Triggers that create work orders in McMain

McMain lets you set up preventive maintenance in practice on time, meter readings, running hours or other triggers. A rule you write once keeps producing work orders without a person who has to remember it. The table shows how the triggers map to common jobs.

Trigger	How the trigger works	Example job
Time	A work order appears at every interval you set	Yearly safety inspection
Meter reading	A work order appears when a meter reaches your threshold	Service after a set number of units
Running hours	A work order appears when a machine has run long enough	Replace a wear part
Other triggers	A work order follows the rule you define	Inspection round after a breakdown

The work slip is the heart of the method. You create it once, and McMain generates the work orders from it. That is the reason a small team can run a full preventive programme without a planner who spends the whole week on administration.

What the Lite plan already includes for preventive work

McMain includes object management, breakdown registration, preventive maintenance, the graphical planning board, reports and work instructions and inspections in the Lite plan. A team that starts small therefore does not need a bigger package to begin. The planning board puts the generated work orders in front of the planner, and the technicians pick them up with a mobile app and visual planning board.

Work instructions and inspections turn each preventive job into a repeatable checklist. The technician follows the same steps every time, and the result is written back to the object history.

How planners and technicians work with the generated work orders

Once a work slip has a trigger, the planner no longer builds the weekly schedule by hand. Generated work orders appear on the graphical planning board, where drag and drop divides the workload and a colour shows the status of every order. The planner spends the week on exceptions instead of on retyping routine jobs.

Technicians receive the same jobs with their work instructions and inspections attached. A technician who finishes an inspection round leaves a record in the object history, and the next planned job follows from the same plan. The loop of plan, execute and record keeps running without a reminder in somebody's calendar, and that loop is what separates a preventive programme from a list of good intentions.

Proof from DFE Pharma and Burg Group

DFE Pharma reports that its OEE rose by 17 percent thanks to inspection rounds and preventive maintenance. A plant that measures its output in OEE sees the effect of planned work directly, so this result carries weight for process and production sites.

Burg Group gives a second angle. The advantage of McMain, in their words, is that the program itself indicates when preventive maintenance needs to be performed, so work orders are scheduled and not forgotten. Both customers run McMain for the same reason: the system keeps the plan running when the team is busy.

How to see whether preventive maintenance pays off

McMain has a work order report that compares corrective maintenance with preventive maintenance over the past year. Run it at the start and again after a few months. The share of preventive work should grow, and the repairs after breakdowns should shrink.

A planned programme also makes the next purchase decision easier. If your project covers several sites, the free switching service for a new CMMS gets your asset data into the system quickly, and the rollout checklist covers what to arrange around it.

Which CMMS is suited to professionalising preventive maintenance?

McMain is our pick. You create a work slip once and the system generates the work orders, based on time, meter readings, running hours or other triggers.

Is preventive maintenance included in the Lite plan?

Yes. The Lite plan includes preventive maintenance, together with object management, breakdown registration, the graphical planning board, reports and work instructions and inspections.

How do I see the difference between corrective and preventive work?

The work order report compares corrective maintenance with preventive maintenance over the past year.

What results have customers seen?

DFE Pharma raised its OEE by 17 percent thanks to inspection rounds and preventive maintenance. Burg Group says the program indicates when preventive work is due, so work orders are scheduled and not forgotten.