What is breakdown maintenance?

Unlike some other maintenance management approaches, breakdown maintenance doesn’t involve regular upkeep or routine maintenance activities designed to prevent assets from failing.

When a piece of equipment fails under a breakdown maintenance program, a repair technician diagnoses the problem and creates a work order. While other maintenance approaches rely on real-time condition-based monitoring (CBM) and predictive analytics, breakdown maintenance is entirely event-driven—maintenance works begin only after an asset has failed.

Breakdown maintenance is one of the oldest and most straightforward approaches to asset management and is still heavily relied upon across many industries. Industrial environments, warehouses, healthcare facilities, utilities infrastructure and transportation fleets all use breakdown maintenance methods as core parts of their maintenance strategy. According to a recent report, in industrial environments alone, breakdown maintenance was the primary strategy for 38% of maintenance teams.¹

Although breakdown maintenance is often negatively associated with unplanned downtime and emergency maintenance, it can still be a highly effective tool when used strategically. Strong maintenance teams rely on proactive maintenance programs for their most critical assets and use breakdown maintenance for non-critical equipment.

A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is a software solution designed to automate and enhance aspects of modern maintenance programs. With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and the Internet of Things (IoT), CMMS tools have become central to many maintenance strategies.

In a breakdown maintenance program, CMMS software tracks which assets are on run-to-fail plans and which need to be regularly serviced by using another type of maintenance.

Here are some of the breakdown maintenance activities that CMMS tools can improve:

• Work order generation
• Spare parts and inventory management
• Maintenance data analysis
• Maintenance procedure documentation
• Workflow optimization

Breakdown maintenance is closely related to another type of maintenance known as corrective maintenance, but there are key differences between the two.

While breakdown maintenance is only necessary when a piece of equipment fails, corrective maintenance can be used throughout the entire asset lifecycle. Also, corrective maintenance typically targets assets with less severe repair needs than those requiring breakdown maintenance. Finally, unlike breakdown maintenance, corrective maintenance rarely causes unplanned downtime.

Both approaches differ significantly from proactive maintenance, a maintenance strategy that includes preventive and predictive maintenance tactics to help prevent asset failures altogether.

The breakdown maintenance process is relatively simple compared to other, more advanced types of maintenance. Here’s a close look at each step.

Breakdown maintenance repairs begin when operators identify a malfunctioning asset.

A technician diagnoses the problem in greater detail and documents the malfunction. The technician creates a work order, typically by using a CMMS tool and describes the problem in detail to the maintenance team.

Depending on the criticality of the damaged asset, the maintenance team must decide whether to repair it immediately using emergency maintenance procedures or schedule it for repair later.

Assessing asset criticality is one of the most important parts of breakdown maintenance because when a non-critical piece of equipment fails, many assets can keep operating without disruptions. For example, replacing light bulbs in a storage facility after they burn out poses little-to-no risk to core business operations, so light bulbs are usually maintained by using a run-to-failure approach.

During the repair phase of breakdown maintenance, technicians diagnose the root cause of the equipment failure and replace or repair damaged components.

Typical maintenance procedures during this phase include inspections, testing and disassembly to isolate and resolve problems. Other maintenance activities during the repair phase include replacing worn bearings, tightening or loosening bolts and even rebuilding an entire production system when necessary.

Strategic inventory management and spare parts play an important role during repair, often aided by a CMMS to help distribute parts and components according to asset criticality.

Before returning the asset to service, technicians thoroughly test and document its functionality, assessing maintenance data from before and after a repair to ensure that it is working properly.

CMMS tools help optimize future maintenance approaches during this phase by gathering and analyzing asset performance history to help operators identify patterns and avoid unplanned downtime.

There are two core types of breakdown maintenance: unplanned breakdown maintenance and planned breakdown maintenance. Organizations need to have a deep understanding of each to build an effective maintenance strategy.

Most maintenance plans categorize unplanned maintenance as a form of reactive maintenance and use it strategically when the cost of asset downtime due to repair exceeds the cost of asset failure.

Successful maintenance programs use unplanned breakdown maintenance only when equipment fails unexpectedly and requires immediate attention. In emergency repair situations, technicians often have little or no warning before equipment failure, so maintenance teams must train to respond quickly and minimize downtime.

Emergency maintenance procedures can be costly when they involve shutdowns, overtime labor costs and expedited spare parts procurement. They are most disruptive when an emergency repair affects a critical asset like a conveyor belt in a manufacturing plant that the organization needs for its core business operations.

Because unplanned downtime can raise repair costs and increase the likelihood of operational disruptions, maintenance teams must balance breakdown maintenance activities with proactive, preventive and predictive maintenance approaches.

Planned breakdown maintenance, also called deliberate run-to-failure maintenance, is more strategic and cost-effective than unplanned breakdown maintenance.

Using a planned approach, organizations allow non-critical equipment to run until it fails because it is more cost-effective than repairing it proactively. This maintenance approach is most effective with low-cost, non-critical assets that don’t affect an organization’s bottom line.

Planned breakdown maintenance helps reduce unnecessary maintenance tasks and better allocate resources toward critical assets. However, it requires more coordination than unplanned maintenance, which can be a barrier for less mature organizations.

Maintenance schedules on a planned approach should include regular inspections to ensure that failures do not create safety risks or larger operational disruptions. Additionally, technicians need to be familiar with CMMS software tools that can assess and determine which assets are appropriate for low-cost, run-to-failure maintenance.

Despite its reputation for causing downtime and frequent operational disruptions, breakdown maintenance can still be an effective tool when used correctly.

Here’s a closer look at some of its benefits:

• Lower upfront maintenance costs: Breakdown maintenance helps organizations reduce initial spending on labor, tools and administration required by proactive, preventive maintenance schedules. Run-to-failure maintenance is also a highly cost-effective maintenance strategy in situations where the cost of replacing an asset is lower than routinely inspecting and repairing it, and the risk to overall business operations if it fails is low.
• Simplified maintenance operations: Breakdown maintenance can help simplify maintenance operations because it doesn’t require extensive planning or systems monitoring. Teams can reduce routine maintenance activities or eliminate them as part of an effective breakdown maintenance plan, reducing the cost of parts and labor and limiting workflow stoppages.
• Stronger asset utilization: Assets operating on a run-to-failure model retain their value to an organization for their entire useful life. Rather than replacing parts and components prematurely, breakdown maintenance ensures that companies extract the maximum value from them before they are retired. This approach helps optimize aspects of asset lifecycle performance, especially for low-cost, low-risk equipment with predictable failure timetables.
• Fewer unnecessary maintenance tasks: While preventive maintenance has many advantages, it often leads to a backlog of routine maintenance tasks that are redundant and unnecessary. For example, components that still have a substantial remaining lifespan can be replaced unnecessarily in a preventive approach. Breakdown maintenance prevents this from happening by ensuring maintenance works occur only when a piece of equipment fails.

Although breakdown maintenance can be an effective tool in a balanced maintenance strategy, it has significant risks that organizations should be aware of:

• Unplanned downtime: One of the biggest reasons organizations resist breakdown maintenance is because of unplanned downtime. When equipment fails unexpectedly, it can cause business operations to stop completely. Unexpected downtime damages productivity, reduces operational efficiency and can cause widespread reputational damage. According to a recent report, unplanned downtime costs industrial companies a minimum of USD 10,000 per hour and can rise as high as USD 500,000 per hour.²
• Higher repair costs: Emergency maintenance activities usually cost more than planned maintenance activities. When an asset fails suddenly, it can result in unexpected repair costs like emergency contractor labor and expedited shipping for spare parts. If the asset fails catastrophically, it can shut down operations for days or even months, increasing repair costs exponentially.  
• Safety risks: Sudden equipment failures can create serious safety risks for workers and damage warehouses, manufacturing plants and other facilities. For example, malfunctioning industrial machinery and breakdowns in electrical systems and pressurized devices can expose employees to hazardous conditions. Because breakdown maintenance focuses on reacting to failures rather than preventing them, it can be hard to train maintenance teams for the variety of situations they might face when performing emergency repairs.
• Shorter asset lifespans: Repeated breakdowns reduce the overall lifespan of most assets, even low-cost ones. Operating equipment until it fails can accelerate wear and tear, increase stress on complex systems and create cascading equipment failures. Organizations that need to extend asset lifecycles as long as possible should avoid breakdown maintenance and focus instead on preventive and predictive maintenance programs.
• Workflow disruptions: Breakdown maintenance frequently stops workflow continuity, halting production schedules and complicating core operations, especially when it’s applied incorrectly to critical assets. When critical assets fail, disruptions can ripple through an entire supply chain, stopping business operations until the asset is repaired.

Despite its shortcomings, modern maintenance operations still rely on breakdown maintenance for key aspects of their overall maintenance strategies.

Here are some examples of breakdown maintenance in different industries:

• Lighting systems: Most organizations maintain lighting systems by using a run-to-fail approach as bulbs are non-critical equipment and inexpensive to replace. Planned breakdown maintenance ensures that light bulbs in warehouses, office buildings and other facilities run until the end of their useful life and are promptly replaced.
• Manufacturing components: In the manufacturing industry, technicians apply breakdown maintenance to most machine parts and systems that don’t directly affect production output. For example, facilities management teams will often allow secondary units like ventilation fans or backup conveyor belts to run until they fail because repairing or replacing them is easy and inexpensive.
• Vehicle fleets: Fleet managers rely on run-to-failure maintenance for all vehicles that are nearing the end of their useful life. Rather than investing heavily in proactive maintenance, operators will often reserve replacement parts and components for newer vehicles because major repair costs on older vehicles can exceed their replacement value.
• Non-critical IT equipment: In IT environments, managers use breakdown maintenance to maintain peripheral hardware like keyboards, monitors and printers. However, IT ecosystems are highly interconnected and maintenance managers relying too heavily on breakdown maintenance risk equipment failures that can cause a cascade effect and impact other systems and hardware.
• Utilities and energy infrastructure: While energy providers typically avoid breakdown maintenance for critical assets, they frequently rely on it to service their more non-critical ones. Examples of assets the utilities and energy sector maintain on a run-to-fail plan include non-essential backup systems, remote condition monitoring displays and old transformers.