What if your most diligent preventative maintenance (PM) plan was actually losing you money?
A Nuvolo customer meticulously serviced their sump pumps on a fixed schedule, following best practices. But after tracking the total cost of this strategy in Nuvolo, including labor, time, and parts, they made a shocking discovery: the PM program was more expensive than simply replacing the pumps when they failed.
Armed with this data, they confidently switched to a run-to-failure (RTF) approach for this specific asset class, using sensors to detect failure. The result? Significant cost savings with zero negative impact on facility performance.
Why Running to Failure Was the Right Call
In the case of sump pumps, a fairly low-cost, replaceable asset, letting them run to failure made sense. Run-to-failure (RTF) is a maintenance strategy where equipment is deliberately operated until it breaks down, at which point it is repaired or replaced. It’s often used for non-critical assets where the cost of planned maintenance outweighs the cost of failure. For this customer, preventative maintenance was costly, and with the help of sensors, maintenance was only performed when needed.
The RTF Litmus Test: 5 Times to Avoid Run-to-Failure
- When Failure Threatens Safety or Compliance: For any asset critical to life, safety, environmental regulations, or industry compliance, proactive maintenance is non-negotiable. The risk of fines, shutdowns, or harm to personnel far outweighs any potential savings.
- Example: Fire suppression systems, emissions control equipment
- When Downtime Costs Are Sky-High: Unplanned failures in crucial systems can cause a ripple effect: production halts, emergency parts costs, overtime labor, or express shipping.
- Example: Main chiller for a data center, production line conveyor
- When Failures are Unpredictable & Spares are Expensive: An effective RTF strategy relies on having the right spare parts ready to go. If an asset fails unpredictably or requires expensive, hard-to-find parts, RTF can lead to extended downtime and a bloated, costly inventory.
- Example: Custom-fabricated components
- When It Kills Team Morale: A workplace in a constant state of emergency burns out your best technicians. If your team is always scrambling to react to breakdowns, productivity plummets, frustration grows, and employee turnover increases.
- Example: Constantly failing HVAC units in an office building
- When It Harms Customer Trust: If asset failure directly impacts your customers, disrupting service, delaying orders, or creating a poor experience, the reputational damage can be more costly than any maintenance plan.
- Example: Elevators in a high-end hotel.
Choosing the Right Maintenance Mix
Reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) starts with asking: What’s the asset’s function, how might it fail, and what’s the consequence? From there, you can map out a strategy, whether that’s preventative, proactive, or RTF.
| Ask Yourself… | If Yes, Consider… | Why… |
| Is the asset critical to safety or operations? | Preventative or proactive maintenance | Avoid dangerous, unplanned disruptions |
| Would failure cause expensive downtime? | Don’t use RTF | Unplanned breakdowns are expensive and disruptive |
| Can you afford to stock spares and respond quickly? | Only use RTF with strong support systems | RTF demands readiness |
| Is failure risk low and impact minimal? | RTF may be OK | Efficient for non-critical, low-cost assets |
How a CMMS Helps with These Maintenance Decisions
When asking yourself these questions, data is the deciding factor, and a modern Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) provides just that.
With Nuvolo’s Asset & Maintenance product, teams can
- Find “Sump Pump” Savings: Easily track the true Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for assets, including labor, parts, and downtime, to see if your PM plan is actually profitable or just a resource drain.
- Replace Guesswork with Data: Use failure trend analysis to understand which assets are candidates for RTF and which require a more proactive strategy based on their actual performance history.
- Automate Your Strategy: Tag assets by criticality to automatically assign the correct maintenance plan, ensuring high-risk equipment never slips through the cracks and low-risk equipment isn’t over-maintained.
- Build a Bulletproof Business Case: Walk into your next budget meeting with clear, data-backed reports that justify your maintenance strategy, proving to leadership that you are managing costs effectively without increasing risk.
Conclusion
For the sump pump customer in the video, tracking this data in Nuvolo revealed that preventative maintenance costs far outweighed the replacement costs. That insight made decision to run-to-failure not just logically, but financially justifiable.
As you navigate the questions above, don’t go at it alone. Schedule a meeting with one of our experts to learn how Nuvolo can help you uncover similar savings opportunities and improve your maintenance strategy.