Limiting the impact of equipment failures on production through curative and corrective maintenance

Curative maintenance is akin to repairing defective or damaged equipment. This type of maintenance is generally emergency maintenance, as it involves intervening on a machine that has broken down in order to replace the failing component.

What problems require a curative maintenance intervention?

Curative maintenance is generally associated with end-of-life equipment, as it applies when a machine cannot be repaired. It therefore consists of partially or fully replacing the equipment concerned.

In industry, curative maintenance is generally used when other types of maintenance — which will be explained later in this article — have failed. For example, if a machine that has already undergone a repair breaks down again with no possibility of performing its functions, it must be replaced.

What is corrective maintenance?

Corrective maintenance involves temporarily repairing a piece of equipment. This could mean, for example, fitting a patch to a punctured tyre.

There are two types of corrective maintenance:

• Immediate corrective maintenance, carried out straight after the breakdown, which reduces the duration of downtime.

• Deferred corrective maintenance, delayed according to given maintenance rules.

What problems require a corrective maintenance intervention?

In industry, a corrective maintenance intervention may be necessary when part of a given piece of equipment is faulty. For example, if a dust extractor shows reduced suction caused by a clogged filter, action will be required. The risk then is the presence of dust resulting from this insufficient suction, without necessarily halting the process. Corrective maintenance then serves to replace the defective filter in order to restore the vacuum essential for the machine to carry out its work.

The advantages of curative and corrective maintenance

The main advantage of curative maintenance is that it is designed to find a long-term solution by eliminating the root causes of breakdowns or faults encountered, in order to restore a piece of equipment to its original operating condition.

In addition, it generates low maintenance costs, requires permanent staffing, and calls for minimal planning.

In industry, corrective maintenance is ideal for detecting the fault and carrying out interventions to eliminate the degradations that prevent equipment from functioning correctly. A repair carried out immediately will also reduce the risk of requiring an urgent breakdown call-out.

Limitations and drawbacks of curative and corrective maintenance in Industry 4.0

Corrective and curative maintenance do, however, present certain drawbacks. In particular, they require holding in stock the components needed to intervene quickly, in order to limit the impact on production and the costs incurred by a prolonged production stoppage.

Furthermore, they are only useful in a small percentage of cases. Indeed, industrial maintenance processes are one of the pillars of industrial productivity. Many types of system maintenance coexist. In addition to corrective and curative maintenance, there is preventive maintenance, which sits upstream of any breakdown or equipment malfunction and makes it possible to anticipate problems.

Ultimately, to adopt a continuous improvement approach, it is essential to optimise the management of maintenance interventions. Having a thorough knowledge of the types of maintenance available is therefore paramount, in order to select the most appropriate maintenance strategy for the various situations encountered in industry. It is also necessary to appoint a maintenance manager, who will be responsible for devising relevant maintenance strategies and thereby contributing to improved production.