Maintenance: keeping equipment available, spending more time on preventive work than on emergencies.
Maintenance repairs what breaks down and, above all, tries to prevent it from happening. Between work requests arriving by phone, preventive plans to keep up, parts to find and reports to enter in the CMMS, the day quickly fills with emergencies. Automation structures these flows, prepares interventions and turns the breakdown history into decisions.
The role
In support of production, quality and safety.
Maintenance keeps equipment available: corrective interventions, preventive maintenance plans, condition-based maintenance, spare parts management, statutory inspections, new installations and planned shutdowns. It constantly arbitrates between the emergency of a stopped line and the preventive task that will avoid the next breakdown. In a mid-sized company, a few technicians and a manager often cover several workshops, supported by outside contractors.
Day to day
A typical day.
- MorningReview overnight breakdowns and pending work requests, and assign the technicians.
- MorningStart the scheduled preventive tasks and prepare parts and lockouts.
- MiddayRespond to a line stoppage: diagnose, repair or apply a temporary fix.
- AfternoonLook for a spare part, place an urgent order or chase a supplier.
- AfternoonCoordinate outside contractors: prevention plans, work permits, safety induction.
- End of dayEnter intervention reports in the CMMS and prepare the next day’s priorities.
The objectives
What the role is measured on.
- Equipment availability
- MTBF and MTTR
- Share of preventive work in total activity
- Preventive work completed on schedule
- Maintenance cost per asset
- Value and turnover of spare parts stock
Indicators are named, never quantified: levels depend on each company, and the diagnostic measures them.
Day to day
The problems that come up most.
Requests arriving through every channel
Phone, a visit to the workshop, e-mail: the work request is not always recorded, and priority is decided by whoever speaks loudest.
Preventive work that slips
Emergencies jump the queue, preventive tasks are postponed, and the breakdowns they were meant to prevent happen.
Incomplete reports
Entering the diagnosis, parts and time in the CMMS after the fact is tedious; the history loses its value.
Parts missing at the worst moment
Spare parts stock is poorly known, critical parts are missing and useless parts sit in the stores.
Recurring breakdowns repaired without being understood
The same failures come back, but analysing them means cross-checking histories that nobody has time to extract.
Regulatory obligations tracked separately
Periodic inspections, equipment qualifications, installation checks: the deadlines live in spreadsheets.
By sector
One role, several realities.
- Cosmetics and beauty
Manufacturing and filling lines with many formats, frequent changeovers, tanks and circuits to clean, maintenance of fillers, labellers and cartoners.
- Industry
Machine tools, presses, assembly lines, utilities and compressors, maintenance on shift patterns, summer or year-end shutdowns, statutory inspections of lifting equipment and pressure equipment.
- Pharma and healthcare
Qualified equipment and validated systems, maintenance under GMP with change control, cleanrooms and air handling, calibration of critical sensors and periodic requalification.
What changes
Automate the task, keep the judgement.
What gets automated
- Work requests reported at the workstation or on mobile, with photo and asset, classified and prioritised according to rules everyone knows.
- Preventive maintenance plans generated in the CMMS by calendar, counters and measurements, with parts and instructions prepared.
- Intervention reports dictated on mobile and formatted by an AI agent, then recorded in the CMMS.
- Parts stock tracked with thresholds, critical parts identified and purchase requests prepared automatically.
- Analysis of recurring breakdowns, MTBF and MTTR calculated by asset, and alerts on sensor drift.
What stays human
- The technical diagnosis and the decision to repair, replace or shut down equipment.
- Priorities between emergencies and preventive work, with production.
- Safety of interventions: lockouts, permits, authorisations.
Use cases
How to automate, case by case.
Each case starts from a question leadership teams ask. The starting point, what gets automated, the tools involved, and what stays in the teams’ hands.
How do you automate preventive maintenance?
- Today
- Preventive plans are kept in the CMMS or in a spreadsheet, but triggering them depends on the maintenance manager printing the work orders. When production is busy, tasks are postponed without a trace, and the gap against the plan only shows at year end.
- What gets automated
- Preventive task lists are attached to each asset with their trigger: calendar, hour or cycle counter, measurement. The CMMS generates work orders at the right time, with parts, tooling and safety instructions, and reserves a slot in the production schedule. Postponements are traced with their reason and overdue preventive work is tracked by asset.
- What stays human
- The maintenance manager decides on postponements and adapts preventive plans with production.
- CMMS
- Scheduling tool
- Sensors and PLCs
How do you automate corrective maintenance work requests?
- Today
- An operator calls maintenance or goes to fetch a technician. The request is not always recorded, priority depends on who shouts loudest, and the report is written, if at all, at the end of the day.
- What gets automated
- The request is reported on the workstation tablet or on mobile, with the asset taken from the line, a photo and a short description. It is prioritised by asset criticality and impact on production, and the on-call technician is notified. An AI agent finds similar past interventions and suggests them with the request.
- What stays human
- The technician makes the diagnosis and the maintenance manager arbitrates between simultaneous emergencies.
- CMMS
- Mobile field app
- AI agent
- Messaging
How do you automate spare parts stock management?
- Today
- The parts store is run separately, often without a reliable inventory. Technicians help themselves without always declaring it, critical parts are missing when a breakdown happens, and parts for scrapped equipment stay in stock.
- What gets automated
- Each part is linked to the assets that use it, with its criticality and supply lead time. Issues are declared on the work order by scanning a code, and stock is updated in the CMMS and the ERP. Below the threshold, a purchase request is prepared; parts with no movement or linked to a retired asset are flagged.
- What stays human
- The maintenance manager sets the critical parts and decides on stock write-offs.
- CMMS
- ERP
- Barcode scanners
How do you automate the analysis of recurring breakdowns?
- Today
- The intervention history exists in the CMMS, but descriptions are free text and causes are rarely coded. Analysing recurring breakdowns means extracting and rereading long lists of interventions, which nobody has time to do.
- What gets automated
- An AI agent rereads the reports, classifies breakdowns by component and failure mode, and groups similar cases. A dashboard calculates MTBF, MTTR and cumulative downtime by asset and by mode, and highlights recurring failures. The results feed the update of the equipment FMEA and the preventive plans.
- What stays human
- Root cause analysis and the choice of action, modification, stronger preventive work or replacement, remain with maintenance and methods.
- CMMS
- AI agent
- Business intelligence (BI) tool
How do you automate condition-based maintenance from sensors?
- Today
- Critical assets sometimes have sensors, but their measurements stay in the PLCs or are only read after a breakdown. Reading rounds are done by hand, on paper.
- What gets automated
- Useful measurements, vibration, temperature, current, pressure, are collected continuously and stored. Thresholds and trends trigger an alert and then a work order in the CMMS before the failure. An anomaly detection model spots unusual behaviour that simple thresholds miss.
- What stays human
- The technician confirms the alert on the asset and decides on the intervention.
- Sensors and PLCs
- Industrial data platform
- CMMS
- Business intelligence (BI) tool
How do you automate writing intervention reports?
- Today
- After an intervention, the technician must enter the diagnosis, actions, parts and time spent in the CMMS. In the field, they jot it on paper or keep it in their head, and entry happens later, often summed up in a few words.
- What gets automated
- The technician dictates the report on mobile, with photos; an AI agent formats it, extracts the component, cause, actions and parts, and pre-fills the work order. Time is taken from the start and close of the intervention. The technician rereads and approves.
- What stays human
- The technician approves the content of the report before it is recorded.
- Mobile field app
- AI drafting agent
- CMMS
How do you automate tracking equipment qualification in a GMP environment?
- Today
- Qualified equipment and utilities must be requalified at a defined interval, and any significant intervention can call their status into question. Deadlines, protocols and reports are tracked in spreadsheets, alongside the CMMS and the quality system.
- What gets automated
- Each qualified asset carries its status, requalification deadlines and documents in a register linked to the CMMS. Any intervention on qualified equipment opens an impact assessment in the quality system, and upcoming requalifications are scheduled with production. Protocols and reports are pre-filled from the asset data.
- What stays human
- Quality assurance approves the impact assessments, the protocols and the qualification status.
- CMMS
- Quality software
- Document management software
- Scheduling tool
How do you automate tracking statutory equipment inspections?
- Today
- Lifting equipment, pressure equipment, electrical installations, automatic doors and gates: each category has its periodic inspections by an approved body. Deadlines and reports are tracked in a spreadsheet, and the observations raised are not always cleared.
- What gets automated
- Each asset subject to inspection has its deadlines in the CMMS, with reminders to the inspection body and preparation for its visit. Reports received are read by an AI agent, which extracts the observations and opens one action per observation. A dashboard shows overdue inspections and uncleared observations by site.
- What stays human
- The maintenance manager decides on corrective actions and on taking a non-compliant asset out of service.
- CMMS
- AI agent
- Action tracking tool
- Messaging
How do you automate managing maintenance contractor interventions?
- Today
- Outside companies come in for specialist maintenance, utilities or works. The prevention plan, work or hot-work permits and the safety induction are prepared on paper, and the contractor’s invoice arrives with no link to the work order.
- What gets automated
- The intervention is requested from the CMMS work order; the contractor receives the request and uploads its documents and its staff’s authorisations to a portal. The prevention plan and permits are prepared from templates and signed electronically. The contractor’s report is attached to the work order, and the invoice is matched with the purchase order.
- What stays human
- The maintenance manager and the safety manager approve the prevention plan and issue the permits.
- CMMS
- Supplier portal
- Electronic signature tool
- ERP
How do you automate preparing planned shutdowns?
- Today
- Planned shutdowns pack heavy preventive work, works, requalifications and contractors into a short period. Preparation is done in a spreadsheet and meetings, and missing parts or contractors are discovered during the shutdown.
- What gets automated
- The shutdown work is gathered from the CMMS: postponed preventive tasks, pending requests, statutory inspections, projects. The tool checks parts, contractors, permits and resources for each job, and builds a shutdown schedule with its dependencies. Progress is tracked daily during the shutdown and the review produced at the end.
- What stays human
- Management and maintenance set the scope of the shutdown and decide which jobs to postpone.
- CMMS
- Scheduling tool
- ERP
- Business intelligence (BI) tool
Questions from the teams
What teams look to improve.
- How do you automate a maintenance department?
- By starting from the daily flows: work requests, preventive work, parts, reports. Each is structured in the CMMS and fed without re-keying, from the workstation, mobile or sensors. The history becomes reliable, and breakdown and cost analyses are based on accurate data. Technicians keep the diagnosis.
- Do you need a CMMS to automate maintenance?
- It is the most common foundation, because it holds the asset register, the history and the preventive plans. Where one exists, automation plugs into it; where it is missing, a simple CMMS can be set up, and the rest connects to it.
- How do you move from corrective to preventive maintenance?
- By first knowing where breakdowns cost the most: critical assets, recurring failures, downtime. Preventive plans focus on these assets, trigger on their own in the CMMS and are protected in the production schedule. Monitoring shows whether the targeted breakdowns are falling.
- What does AI bring to maintenance?
- It helps write reports from dictation, find similar breakdowns in the history, classify requests and spot drift in sensor measurements. Diagnosis and decisions remain with the technician.
- How do you set up condition-based maintenance?
- By choosing a few critical assets and the measurements that signal a failure: vibration, temperature, current, pressure. Sensors report these measurements, thresholds trigger an intervention in the CMMS, and the thresholds are refined with experience.
- How do you calculate MTBF and MTTR automatically?
- From the stoppages recorded in the CMMS or by the PLCs, with their start and end times and the asset concerned. The indicators are calculated by asset and by period, provided stoppages are declared consistently.
- How do you manage maintenance in a GMP environment?
- By connecting the CMMS to the quality system: any intervention on qualified equipment is assessed, changes go through change control, and reports are traced with an audit trail. Automation prepares the files, quality assurance approves.
- How do you reduce spare parts stock without risk?
- By classifying parts by asset criticality and supply lead time, then setting thresholds per part. Actual consumption from the CMMS adjusts the thresholds, and parts with no movement are flagged for decision.
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