What is an Equipment Maintenance Log?
An equipment maintenance log is an important document that holds the record of maintenance and inspections performed with the equipment. This is normally used in the manufacturing industry but is recommended for organizations with any equipment. The equipment maintenance log helps ensure the longevity of equipment by helping maintain an inspection schedule and alerting technicians of defective equipment.
The log contains information about the condition, operating hours, repairs, actions, and inspections of the equipment. This is written manually using an equipment maintenance logbook that could be bought from retailers. A company also has the option to personalize and even have it digitally available in different formats like spreadsheets, PDF files, or via an app. Finding one that caters to your business needs will help keep your equipment in good working condition, enhance your equipment maintenance process, maximize equipment life, and prevent operational downtime.
4 Main Types of Maintenance
Equipment manufacturers have a predetermined maintenance procedure that operators are recommended to follow. Companies can also adopt other kinds of maintenance services as an extra measure to preserve equipment and cut costs. Industries that have factory facilities benefit from regular maintenance since it helps production run smoothly. For most industries, maintenance falls under four main types:
1. Corrective
This type of maintenance isn’t scheduled and is conducted out of necessity. For example, a technician is operating a piece of equipment and sees one that malfunctioned or isn’t working properly. The technician can then flag it for repair immediately so that production isn’t affected.
2. Preventive
Preventive maintenance or preventative maintenance is a scheduled inspection that’s widely used by organizations to stop potential equipment problems. Equipment maintenance log templates are often made in this type. Preventive maintenance differs from corrective in that it’s conducted following a specified schedule, regardless of whether or not equipment is known to be malfunctioning.
3. Condition-based
This is similar to preventive maintenance but includes a more advanced course of action. Condition-based maintenance doesn’t rely on a set schedule but on the observations of the operators. They check on the difference in the performance of the equipment such as average production speed or quality.
4. Predictive
This type uses additional tools such as sensor devices which can be utilized for an equipment’s ongoing condition monitoring. These devices usually include software to collate equipment data. This data contains changes from the equipment and also records of performance. The drawback to this is that the sensor also needs to be maintained.
Equipment Maintenance Checklist
As a key component of asset management, it is critical that the maintenance management system along with its planning and actions—are well defined and documented. An equipment maintenance checklist can be used as part of the daily maintenance procedure. Common checklist items include:
- Date and time of maintenance
- Maintenance description
- Actions taken
- Attach photos of equipment
- Validation and signatures
- Next maintenance due date
Importance of Routine Equipment Maintenance Logs
Maintaining your equipment is important to ensure it lives through its usual life cycle or longer. It keeps processes running smoothly and prevents accidents from happening. Broken machines create a domino effect of consequences that affects the company in the long run. Investing in equipment maintenance is only costly at the start but this can prevent repair costs from piling up through routine inspections and doing consistent equipment maintenance recordkeeping. Maintenance also saves the environment since well functioning equipment uses less energy.
How to Keep Track of Equipment Maintenance Logs
These are the step-by-step guides on how to properly proceed with equipment maintenance recordkeeping. The following presents two methods illustrating the common, paper-based method and the more efficient digital method using a mobile app.
Common method of accomplishing equipment maintenance logs:
- Collect all equipment maintenance schedules
- Organize by frequency of inspection
- Print out the equipment maintenance form
- Assign people to do the inspection
- Technicians pass the logbook to the next shift
- Retrieve equipment maintenance form
- Record the inspections done
- Check the pieces of equipment that need attention based on the reports
- Store the equipment maintenance logs in a safe place.
- Repeat
Recommended method of accomplishing equipment maintenance logs:
- Download an app such as SafetyCulture (formerly iAuditor)
- Create or download a pre-made template
- Automatically assign someone or a group for a specific template
- Schedule an inspection and add optional alerts and notifications
- Customize how often the equipment maintenance log should be done
- Conduct the inspection using the SafetyCulture app; inspection reports are automatically generated after an inspection
- Instantly share inspection reports via the mobile app.
The second method presented above is more efficient and accurate for organizations because it makes it easier to generate reports and share them with the appropriate people. Safety should never be compromised. Bringing immediate attention to equipment that needs to be repaired can make a huge difference in ensuring that industry standards are met.
