Published 26 Sept 2025
Article by
5 min read
What is a Preventive Maintenance Checklist?
A preventive maintenance (PM) checklist is a useful document that enumerates the necessary maintenance activities to be performed on an asset. It helps businesses implement an efficient and systematic check on their equipment and facilities. This structured approach empowers machine operators and maintenance teams to identify potential issues before they escalate into serious problems proactively. By following a PM checklist, organizations can improve the reliability and longevity of their assets, reduce downtime, and maintain a safe working environment.
What is Preventive Maintenance?
Preventive maintenance is a proactive approach to maintenance that helps prevent unplanned downtime and reduce costs from unforeseen equipment failure. By conducting routine maintenance, technicians ensure that equipment is always in good working condition and that downtime, or any work disruption, is planned and accommodated for ahead of schedule. For preventive maintenance to work, strategic planning and scheduling are key. Additionally, accurate recordkeeping of all inspections, maintenance procedures, service and status reports is vital to any successful preventive maintenance program. These records provide both current and historical equipment data and can help determine if a piece of equipment should be repaired or replaced entirely.
Preventive maintenance processes will vary depending on the industry and the type of equipment. For example, preventive maintenance for medical devices would differ from that of manufacturing equipment. Depending on the location, there are often set standards or regulations used to help determine the type of maintenance or inspection necessary and how frequently they should be conducted. In the US, this is under the purview of the American National Standards Institute ( ANSI ), the organization responsible for ensuring the health and safety of consumers through overseeing the guidelines and regulations that encompass almost every industry.
How to Use a Preventive Maintenance Checklist
A recent study shows how a telecommunications company gained a 545% return on investment (ROI) after it implemented a preventive maintenance plan. Although a 545% return sounds good, it comes at the cost of getting buy-in from stakeholders and management teams to implement a preventive maintenance plan that requires a lot of work and an in-depth understanding of operations and the equipment that keeps the business running.
The content of a preventive maintenance checklist changes depending on its use and the equipment to be inspected. However, a good PM checklist should ideally follow the structure of:
Select the assets that should be on the preventive maintenance schedule
The best way to demonstrate the effectiveness of a preventive maintenance plan is to start with only a few assets, choose the most critical ones. This will also help the maintenance team transition into a more proactive mindset and workflow.
Gather all necessary information
To highlight the ROI of the preventive maintenance plan, you will need to calculate and provide the dollar amount that will be saved for each asset. It’s also vital that you have a complete list of specific maintenance tasks to be performed and their frequency because these may also incur some costs.
Draft the initial preventive maintenance plan
After gathering the necessary information pertinent to the preventive maintenance plan, it should be entered into your chosen maintenance planning tool, preferably a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS). A digital tool will help the maintenance team assign tasks, add priority and due dates, and allow for easy collaboration on maintenance tasks and procedures.
Monitor and adjust accordingly
To ensure that time is maximized during the implementation of the preventive maintenance plan, the maintenance team should monitor how much maintenance work has been done to specific equipment and how many failures, if any, it experienced after the fact. This will help avoid the trap of spending too much time or work on a specific asset when it isn’t needed.
Expand the preventive maintenance plan to cover all assets
After initial preventive maintenance has proven its significant ROI, getting approval from management will be easier. This will also make the case for the maintenance team when they decide to expand the scope of the preventive maintenance plan. As the plan is expanded to cover all assets within the organization, the ROI also becomes more significant.
What is included in a preventive maintenance checklist?
A preventive maintenance inspection checklist should be tailored to the specific equipment being inspected. The type of equipment will also define how often the inspection should be conducted. The checklist typically includes the following components :
Equipment details : Name, identification number, location, and vendor information.
Visual inspections : Check for visible signs of structural wear, damage, or abnormalities.
Operational checks : Confirm that the equipment functions as expected. This usually covers mechanical and electrical components of the equipment.
Maintenance Tasks : Conduct necessary maintenance tasks such as replacement of parts or recalibration. Keep track of these action items during the inspection.
Safety checks : Ensure all safety features are working properly and comply with regulations.
Documentation : Summarize inspection findings, actions taken, and recommendations for future maintenance.
Preventive Maintenance Checklist PDF Example
Here’s an example of a complete preventive maintenance checklist in PDF format:
