But we’ve always done it this way!

“But we’ve always done it this way!” I recently heard this from a maintenance strategist while we were discussing concepts for optimizing maintenance activities. I often hear similar statements: “I know the new maintenance ideas. But I already know how to maintain my assets well. That’s just good common and engineering sense.” Fair enough, but can we really leave it at that? Here’s an overview of the maintenance concepts currently circulating in the industry:

Boredom as a Goal

When nothing happens, we’re doing a good job. The best infrastructure operator is invisible. That’s a simple way to sum up our industry’s goal. However, the impact of a good maintenance strategy isn’t immediately measurable. Asset reliability depends on many factors, including the unpredictable element of chance, which statisticians love to hate. For example, when measuring SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration Index) in the power grid, the speed of fault response plays a big role, which has little to do with actual maintenance.

In the end, two factors matter: First, what am I doing to avoid breakdowns? In other words, how much budget am I willing to allocate for maintenance? And second, what happens if there’s a breakdown? How severe are the consequences, and what level of malfunction can I tolerate?

Types of Maintenance – Courage Matters

There are different approaches to maintenance, each requiring varying levels of courage. “Courage in infrastructure? Mr. Förster, courage is for roller coasters, not our power grid!” I can already hear the comments.

Whether it’s the laissez-faire approach, where assets are only repaired, not maintained, or using algorithms to predict future asset conditions and prevent failures, the possibilities are endless. But that’s exactly what makes maintenance both challenging and fun, right? There’s no single perfect maintenance strategy that fits every company or asset. Recipes are for cooking shows, not maintenance strategy. You have to keep mixing the right ingredients.

Breakdown-Oriented – The MacGyver of Asset Management

In the laissez-faire approach, you only react to failures and don’t do much else. The series hero MacGyver jumps in with a parachute to fix things just in time.

It’s obvious this approach lacks coordination and is hard to plan. Operators often don’t know the actual condition of the network, which can lead to a needle-in-a-haystack hunt when multiple failures occur at once. This approach isn’t suited for every asset. Small, mass-produced items where a failure or downtime has little impact are good candidates. Think of your kitchen mixer—you only consider repairing it if it breaks. And MacGyver doesn’t need to grab his parachute for that!

Time-Based – The Derrick of Asset Management

Boring but effective—time-based maintenance. Many use a “light” form of breakdown-oriented maintenance with regular upkeep. This simply means that maintenance activities and, if necessary, repairs happen at predefined times. Think about it like the average person’s relationship with their heating system. All year, they don’t think about it—until it fails during Christmas with the in-laws visiting. To avoid this, people sign maintenance contracts with their trusted heating technician, who comes by once a year to check the system. If it still breaks down on Christmas, at least they know whom to blame.

Condition-Based – The Big Bang Theory of Asset Management

With both previous strategies, you don’t actually know the asset’s condition. In technical terms, you lack information on its “state.” Sometimes it makes sense to know when an intervention is needed because some assets can’t be allowed to fail. Monitoring an asset’s condition regularly can help, though it’s resource-intensive, involving either on-site inspections or, in modern setups, remote diagnostics using sensors. Think of a smart fridge that tells you if the milk has expired or the door was left open. Today, even infrastructure assets like transformers can inform operators if they’re overheating or overloaded. It requires some thought and a lot of experience, but with this approach, Sheldon Cooper could achieve good quality results at manageable costs.

Reliability-Centered – Now We’re Getting Futuristic

Not every maintenance strategy is suitable for every asset. Some assets are more critical than others. A downtime can have greater repercussions, possibly leading to system failures or high subsequent costs. Think of your kitchen: a broken refrigerator full of perishables is a bigger issue than a broken oven. And when resources are limited, repairing the fridge would take priority over the dishwasher (or vice versa, depending on preference). You get the idea: certain assets can be prioritized based on their importance, and that’s a good thing. In some infrastructures, assessing importance is even more comprehensive than deciding what’s essential in the kitchen.

Predictive – Madame Seraphina’s Crystal Ball

In an age where computers are smarter than Sheldon Cooper, maintenance can, of course, be approached mathematically. You don’t necessarily need to know an asset’s exact state at all times. Hard to believe, but these statistical methods often outperform the gut feeling of some experienced technicians. “Mr. Förster, give me a break! No offense to our technicians!” No offense meant—technicians are the backbone of our infrastructure. But math isn’t bad either.

Predictive Maintenance, as this approach is called, is a promising trend. It doesn’t have to be limited to infrastructure; it’s applicable to devices from smart pacemakers to small factories and public utilities. The idea is to gather large amounts of data and analyze many correlations. This way, you can predict asset conditions accurately. At the end of the day, you may not know which correlation was decisive—but you don’t need to. Just throw everything into the pot, and one of the ingredients will work. We’re only at the beginning, but there’s much more to come.

The Bottom Line?

There are many different maintenance strategies, and thus many options. Some of these strategies are used privately without us even realizing it. Of course, this can also be applied to infrastructure. Just because we’ve always done it a certain way doesn’t mean we should stick to the status quo. Stay tuned for more on finding the right maintenance strategy. With my company, Meliorate, I have been supporting infrastructure owners and operators with these questions since 2011.

Author: Oliver Förster