Maintenance plays a significant role in the total lifecycle cost (LCC) of marine equipment.
To make informed purchasing decisions based on reliable lifecycle cost predictions, operators and shipyards often request maintenance plans from OEMs.
A lack of, or high-cost, maintenance plans can easily lead a buyer to choose a competitor’s product.
Therefore, to remain competitive in the bidding process, OEMs must carefully consider the maintenance policies of their products.
Corrective Maintenance
Corrective maintenance means allowing equipment to operate until it fails, at which point it is repaired or replaced. This is often summarized as the well-known rule: “Don’t fix it unless it’s broken.”
This approach maximizes the usable life of the equipment, minimizing the cost of spare parts and maintenance labor.
For example, many consumer products rely primarily on corrective maintenance due to their low replacement cost and short lifecycle.
However, since the actual time of failure is difficult to predict, the short-notice availability of spare parts and skilled labor becomes critical.
Allowing equipment to run until failure can also trigger failure causality, where the breakdown of one component leads to secondary failures in other systems.
Because of these complex failure mechanisms, corrective maintenance often requires highly skilled technicians to perform the repair work safely and effectively.
Criteria for Choosing a Corrective Maintenance Policy
The purpose of a maintenance policy is to manage the risk of equipment failure based on its probability and potential consequences.
The first question when designing a maintenance policy is whether the failure of a component is acceptable from safety and operational risk perspectives.
Safety Risks
Safety risks endanger the crew, passengers, or the environment. For example, the failure of a fire-fighting system is a critical safety risk.
Safety risks can be classified into levels such as:
- Death, loss of vessel, or major pollution
- Severe injury, major damage, or pollution
- Minor injuries or secondary damage
- Possible light injuries or limited damage
Operational Risks
Operational risks affect the operator’s ability to perform and profit. These risks can manifest in various degrees, including:
- The vessel is completely inoperable
- The vessel is only partially operable
- The vessel is temporarily unavailable for a period of time
If both safety and operational risks of a system are assessed as acceptable, the OEM may choose corrective maintenance as the appropriate policy.
If not, preventive maintenance should be adopted instead to minimize the probability and impact of failure.
✅ Summary
Corrective maintenance can be a cost-effective strategy when risks are low and equipment failure does not compromise safety or operations.
However, it demands careful planning for spare parts availability, skilled workforce management, and risk assessment to ensure reliability and minimize downtime.
⚙️ Call to Action
If your organization needs support in defining maintenance strategies or optimizing lifecycle cost models for marine equipment, I can help.
As an independent marine engineering consultant, I assist OEMs, shipyards, and operators in developing data-driven maintenance and support policies that balance cost, reliability, and safety.
👉 Contact me to discuss how to improve your maintenance strategy and reduce lifecycle costs.