IT Preventive Maintenance: Guide, Tools, and Checklist

TL;DR

• IT preventive maintenance is maintenance before your IT assets break down. This, in turn, identifies any potential threats and dodges them before fallout.

• The preventive maintenance checklist is a set of guidelines to follow during maintenance. You must update your hardware, OS, and software, clean your network equipment, cables, PCs, and laptops, delete unused profiles, and constantly update the checklist based on the results.

• Follow the guidelines for effective IT preventive maintenance: identify assets to be maintained, outline parameters, and set the frequency of maintenance. Stakeholders carry out these with clear instructions and checklists. The maintenance team can update the checklist after maintenance.

• Preventive maintenance can be time-based—for instance, when a bulk update is needed—or usage-based when one asset is used heavily.

What is preventive maintenance?

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Preventing maintenance is a category of maintenance that is performed regularly on your equipment to avoid burnout.

It prevents breakdowns through regular inspection, adjustment, and repair. This maintenance is carried out while the equipment is still working so the device does not fail unexpectedly. 

In its most basic form, preventive maintenance is synonymous with the saying, ‘Prevention is better than cure.’

Its objective is to amp up the performance and increase longevity. 

Preventive maintenance can yield a significant ROI, averaging 545%. This is primarily due to reduced downtime, extended equipment lifespan, and lower repair costs. This addresses problems like excessive delay in production, time loss, productivity loss, and more.

Your maintenance engineer locates weak points like split monitors, parts subjected to vibration, and parts subjected to high temperatures and eradicates the bottom-line problems behind them, reducing the danger of breakdown.

Why is preventive maintenance important?

Proper preventive maintenance can extend the lifespan of equipment by 20-40% and save up to 50% on maintenance costs compared to reactive approaches.

These cost savings come from more efficient scheduling of maintenance tasks; proper preventive maintenance can extend the lifespan of equipment by 20-40% fewer emergency repairs.

This itself speaks about the significance of preventive maintenance.

Preventive maintenance can prove to be the best option for your firm as it leads to:

1. Increased safety: Equipment not working at its utmost capacity could be hazardous to your employees. Hardware burnout can lead to blasts, short circuits, and potential loss of the firm's instrumental data. With IT preventive maintenance checks, the equipment is regularly scrutinized, leading to smooth working and reduced fallout.

2. Enhanced equipment efficiency: Preventive maintenance can help plan routine maintenance, such as inspections, part replacement, and smoothening a part’s functionality. If an IT asset or part is not maintained, it naturally degrades over time. Thus, the asset is under extra pressure to perform, decreasing its productivity and spiking costs. With preventive maintenance, equipment works at its peak, increasing efficiency and lower productivity costs.

3. Dependability: Unreliable assets result in delays and errors, making your business production daunting and causing you to lose out on trusted clients. If you incorporate preventive maintenance, productivity increases, and production is completed on or before the deadline.

4. Decrease asset downtime: Companies can plan maintenance time during non-working hours with a preventive maintenance program. This implies that downtime doesn’t impact business productivity. When you work on repairs during off-hours, the time to repair the parts doesn’t impede business.

What are the five components of preventive maintenance?

An effective preventive maintenance program involves diverse activities chosen based on your budget, staff expertise, equipment specifications, regulatory requirements, and specific operational goals.

The five components of preventive maintenance include:

• Correct asset installation: The first step towards preventive maintenance is accurately installing assets and their parts. An improper equipment setup can negatively impact an asset’s performance and lead to unplanned downtime.  Complying with the manufacturer's guidelines can lead to proper installation and working assets without glitches, instead of those that falter on the first day.

• Timely inspections: When an IT asset (hardware) is inspected regularly, there are quite a few chances of fallout. This helps identify chances of wear, tear, damage, and any inching problems. The inspection depends on the gravity of the fallout you are trying to direct. It may range from cursory observations to in-depth assessments of the issue with tools. These inspections determine minor problems before they translate into severe havoc. You can also train your workforce to investigate these issues meticulously by following a standard operating procedure (SOP).

• Regular testing: These tests go a mile beyond cursory insight. The equipment is tested under vigorous circumstances. For instance, to assess the health of a hard drive, interrogation is done to evaluate the number of reallocated blocks, which implies that the recording surface is deteriorating. Computers can also identify the functionality of RAM by writing data to it reading it back, and comparing both values. It is standard for devices installed on PCI or USB buses to expect a response when commands are sent to them. If there is no response or if the response is incorrect, it indicates a problem that needs to be addressed. The key to regular testing is identifying the asset (PCs, laptops, servers, etc.) and accurately interpreting the data.

• Scheduled servicing: The IT assets should be serviced in timely firmware and software updates for routers, switches, and hardware controllers. Regularly cleaning keyboards, monitors, and internal parts avoids dust buildup and overheating. Systems should be scanned for viruses, malware, and other malicious software to keep them running smoothly. Security patches should be applied promptly to protect systems from vulnerability. 

• Calibration: Calibration is often part of certification processes, where equipment must meet optimal performance standards to be certified. Asset readings are compared to highly accurate, standard reference data. Calibration is done for monitors, displays, printers, scanners, sensors, and measuring instruments like temperature and humidity sensors. Regular calibration of IT assets helps maintain accuracy, prevent data errors, and ensure the reliability of systems and devices.

Guideline for effective preventive maintenance

IT preventive maintenance is vital for all companies. However, it’s imperative for your remote teams. Since everything is managed over a network and from a distance, working in tandem with the IT assets and workforce is a must.

You need to have a pre-configuration checklist before you actually carry out the preventive maintenance.

Here is a step-by-step guide to list down before you actually carry out the maintenance.

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• Step 1: Identify asset

List all the equipment and assets to be run under regular maintenance. This will give a blueprint of the checklist, ensuring all the equipment is covered.

• Step 2: Maintenance tasks

Note the functionality of each piece of equipment and create a list of preventive maintenance plans for all the assets. This should be in accordance with manufacturer recommendations, industry standards, and company guidelines.

• Step 3: Frequency of maintenance

Create a framework for how often an asset can go through preventive maintenance based on equipment type, age, and external conditions like temperature, humidity, etc.

• Step 4: Define stakeholder

Define whether an individual or team is responsible for preventive maintenance of IT assets.

• Step 5: Create a checklist

Jot down an easy-to-follow checklist that identifies the tasks for each IT asset, their frequency, and the responsible stakeholder.

• Step 6: Test checklist

Test the checklist to ensure it includes all the important tasks for the equipment. Implement the functions and get feedback from maintenance personnel.

• Step 7: Integrate the checklist

Once the checklist is tested and final, integrate it into the maintenance activity. Train your workforce to implement the checklist easily.

• Step 8: Review and update

Assess the checklist regularly to gauge its effectiveness and accuracy. Update the checklist based on equipment modifications and elements that may be needed in maintenance.

IT preventive maintenance precheck

Across industries, preventive maintenance strategies are becoming more sophisticated, incorporating data analytics and predictive maintenance techniques. These advancements help organizations anticipate equipment failures before they occur, optimizing maintenance schedules and reducing costs.

By incorporating IT preventive maintenance precheck, a preliminary assessment of critical assets is carried out to ensure smooth functioning. For a remote workforce, preventive maintenance prevents any bulk fallout of all the IT equipment and ensures any risks before the wear and tear are predetermined.

Thus the precheck is implemented in the following steps:

1. Documentation overview: Outline if IT assets' hardware specifications, software versions, and warranty status are updated. Also, list the maintenance history to find any potential issues or recurring problems.

2. System backup: Ensure the system is backed up to prevent data loss if the hard disk, server, or other data storage devices fail during preventive maintenance.

3. Delegate duties to the team: Enlist the team members, managers, and IT staff who will be instrumental in carrying out the preventive maintenance task. 

4. Set expectations: Create an expectation that directly defines what is expected of the maintenance. This may include making costly repairs, replacing a part, or developing a long-term strategy for the asset.

5. List down equipment to be repaired: Make a list of IT assets that will go under maintenance, and prioritize hefty and critical equipment that is expected to fail quickly.

6. Set access notifications and permissions: Notify the workforce about the preventive maintenance to be carried out. The maintenance team responsible should also have the necessary permissions.

7. Create your own documentation: After skimming through the manufacturer documentation of IT assets, source essential details. Also, enlist your steps while implementing the maintenance and store them in a repository where they can be quickly accessed by the team.

How to create an IT preventive maintenance checklist for remote teams?

An ultimate checklist for IT preventive maintenance prevents the failure of your IT assets, the risk of breakdown, and unprecedented costs. Its main agenda is to lower downtime and enhance peak efficiency.

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Types of Preventive Maintenance

Time-based maintenance: Also known as calendar-based tasks, is implemented on IT assets at regular intervals, irrespective of their health condition. This is critical for IT equipment working remotely or in bulk, where personal inspection is daunting.

However, since it is run in a timely manner and doesn't depend on the device’s condition, it doesn’t always answer the question of risk and reward.

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For example, say you have 1000 computers registered on your company’s network. In this scenario, it isn’t productive to address each PC individually. Monthly preventive maintenance of all PCs on the network is quite feasible. 

Usage-based maintenance: Usage-based preventive maintenance, also known as meter-based or runtime maintenance, depends on how often an IT asset is used. This type of preventive maintenance is usually done when the IT asset is on heavy duty.

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For example, when a printer works for 1000 printed pages and is gauged for its maintenance, it is irrelevant to measure its performance each month when it has barely printed 10 pages.

Three examples of preventive maintenance

Let’s delve into three scenarios where preventive maintenance is needed, not needed, and is questionable.

1. Preventive maintenance is not needed: Let’s assume your organization has a fleet of old printers that are rarely used. Here, the printing tasks are assigned to the newer printers with a better printing rate or efficiency. 

The old printers are at the end of their lifecycle and will be replaced soon. In this case, you can skip scheduling preventive maintenance for these old printers. Instead, they choose preventive maintenance of newer printers and devices used heavily daily, like servers and networking equipment.

2. Preventive maintenance is needed: A mid-size company heavily relies on its central servers for daily operations. This includes hosting internal databases, email servers, and business applications. 

These IT assets are critical to the company’s productivity and are used for employee communication, customer relationship management, and inventory tracking.

Since these are instrumental to the company’s productivity, they are used for regular software updates, hardware checks, audits, and performance monitoring.

3. Preventive maintenance is questionable: Your company uses old desktops for tasks like data entry or internet browsing. These workstations are not connected to critical work, and their failure would not impact the company’s operations. Your company is looking to replace these systems in the next one or two years and source fresh systems. 

Your company may decide whether to invest in preventive maintenance for these IT assets. Preventive maintenance, such as regular hardware checks, software updates, and clean-ups, becomes questionable for the firm.

The benefits of preventive maintenance

• Lowered downtime: Unplanned downtime can throw your business operations off track. If preventive maintenance is not implemented on your IT assets in time, it can lead to unanticipated equipment breakdowns. Organizations that adopt preventive maintenance strategies often experience a significant reduction in unplanned downtime.

• Increased lifeline: A timely implemented predictive maintenance lowers wear and tear and increases your asset's lifetime.

• Reduced cost of maintenance: Since your device is repaired frequently, the scope of fallouts is lessened, lowering the cost of maintenance.

• Increased productivity: As the IT asset is maintained regularly, it lowers hazards and increases productivity.

• Enhanced safety: The more frequently the assets are inspected and repaired, the lower the chances of breaches and havoc.

Challenges in predictive maintenance

• Higher initial costs: Since preventive maintenance is carried out for a larger workforce, its initial cost can leave you gasping in its initial phase. However, in the long run, it reduces the cost of repair.

• Larger workforce is needed: A dedicated team is needed to carry out preventive maintenance. The workforce may have to neglect their KPIs for the time invested in maintenance and comply with the checklist occasionally.

• It is tedious to organize. While paper-based tasks can help with smaller maintenance tasks, larger ones are difficult to manage. They need an orchestration system to eradicate errors and scale operations tasks.

Amp Up your IT Hardware Management with Workwize 

Make preventive maintenance a breeze with IT hardware management. Here’s how Workwize helps your global team:

• IT Hardware Procurement: Get rid of logistics complexity and compliance risks and manage multiple vendors via an interactive dashboard.

• IT Hardware Deployment: Get MDM-enabled pre-configured laptops and automate onboarding via your preferred HRIS platform.

• IT Hardware Management: Track your rented/bought or BYOD assets with their current and depreciating value. The IT support team is just a click away to resolve any conflicts.

• IT Hardware Retrieval: Access zero-touch retrieval by monitoring employee communication, packaging, and logistics.

• IT Hardware Disposal: Get the best market price for your end-of-life hardware via local warehouses or donate—all with a certificate of data destruction.