Corrective maintenance can be defined as the maintenance which is required when an item has failed or worn out, to bring it back to working order. Corrective maintenance is carried out on all items where the consequences of failure or wearing out are not significant. This form of maintenance is also called instant maintenance or destructive maintenance.

Benefits corrective maintenance

Early replacement does not take place so that no parts are changed unnecessarily. Also drawing up a maintenance plan is unnecessary.

Disadvantages corrective maintenance

A major disadvantage of corrective maintenance is that failure is often resulting in an unexpected stop of a machine and unexpected and unplanned repairs. In most cases the costs involved are much higher than in case of preventive maintenance.

Conditions for corrective maintenance

Corrective maintenance can be still effective for non-critical machines which can be repaired or replaced quickly or which are carried out redundant. An important condition is that spare parts (machines) must be available quickly on location.

Critical installations

To avoid lengthy downtime, for critical assets it is much better to apply preventive or predictive maintenance.