Predictive vs. Preventive Maintenance: Finding the Right Balance

Sponsored by FS-Elliott

Preventive and predictive maintenance are often framed as competing approaches, but Wael Al Mandarawi argues both are necessary. He describes moving away from a purely time-based maintenance model toward a risk-based strategy that weighs equipment criticality, failure effect, spare parts availability, and restoration time for each asset.

Al Mandarawi details a study run across 450 major pieces of equipment, where some assets were cleared for full extension of inspection intervals and others allowed no extension at all due to hazard risk: a risk-based approach that reduced planned five-year maintenance costs by roughly 40 percent while keeping failure rates controlled. He credits real-time remote monitoring data as one of the key tools that made that shift possible.

Maintenance planners weighing calendar-based schedules against condition-based indicators will find a concrete, field-tested framework in this episode.