Technically speaking, productive maintenance is not a form of maintenance in its own right. It gathers the various forms together: breakdown maintenance, preventive maintenance, corrective maintenance and maintenance prevention — so as to get more result out of being ready, out of preventing, out of improving, and out of designing so that maintenance can be avoided. Hence the word “productive”.
Why productive maintenance is necessary
Through the whole evolution from breakdown maintenance to productive maintenance, no one form of maintenance can be used on its own. Breakdown maintenance cannot be used in a production process that has no spare machine, and cannot be used in a continuous process; hence preventive maintenance. But that does not mean the machine will never have the chance to fail again — so breakdown maintenance cannot be abandoned either.
Preventive maintenance needs breakdown maintenance behind it for readiness, and needs corrective maintenance as well to make maintaining convenient. But however convenient the machine is made, maintenance still takes time. In the end maintenance prevention follows, looking for ways to make the machine need no maintenance, or as little as possible.
Over-maintenance
Preventive maintenance applied intensively from the moment a machine is bought and through its whole working life can make it fail less, or barely at all. But sometimes it goes beyond what is necessary — along the lines of “how could the machine fail, when all its time goes on being maintained?” This is over-maintenance, and productive maintenance can guard against it.
What productive maintenance is made of
Productive maintenance is made up of breakdown maintenance, for readiness should the machine fail; preventive maintenance, so that it does not fail while production is running; corrective maintenance, to make the machine easy to work with; and maintenance prevention, to cut the time maintenance must take.
So productive maintenance is preventive maintenance that is ready should the machine fail, while at the same time studying and analysing to find ways of making the machine easy to work with, easy to look after, easy to repair, and in need of less looking after.
Productive maintenance brings the results of the various forms of maintenance together, and that is where the word “productive” comes from. It does not, however, yet bring together the cooperation of every department — and so another phrase is needed: “productive maintenance in which everyone takes part”.