What Is Predictive Maintenance?
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What Is Predictive Maintenance?
Predictive maintenance is a maintenance strategy that uses real-time data from sensors on equipment — vibration, temperature, sound, power draw — to predict when a machine is likely to fail, so it can be repaired just before that happens rather than on a fixed schedule or after a breakdown. It sits between reactive maintenance (fix it when it breaks) and preventive maintenance (service it on a calendar).
How Predictive Maintenance Works
Sensors continuously feed data into a monitoring system, often connected through IoT devices, which looks for patterns that historically precede failure — a bearing that's starting to vibrate slightly differently, a motor running a few degrees hotter than normal. Machine learning models trained on this data can flag anomalies and estimate a remaining useful life for a component, triggering a maintenance ticket before the failure actually occurs.
Predictive vs Preventive Maintenance
Compared to preventive maintenance, which services equipment on a fixed schedule whether it needs it or not, predictive maintenance reduces both unplanned downtime and unnecessary servicing — parts get replaced when they're actually wearing out, not on an arbitrary calendar date. The tradeoff is upfront investment in sensors, connectivity and analytics, which pays off fastest on critical, expensive-to-replace equipment.