Maintenance

5 Reasons for Performing Preventive Maintenance on Your Laboratory Equipment

1. The purpose of preventive maintenance is to prevent failures and maintain optimal operation. The main characteristic of this type of laboratory equipment maintenance is to inspect, detect faults in their early stages, and correct them in a timely manner.
2. With good preventive maintenance, you gain experience in diagnosing faults and the safe operating time of equipment. Those responsible for the operation should develop a preventive maintenance program based on a quality assurance and control scheme to keep the equipment operating correctly, with the aim of reducing data loss, preventing repairs, equipment deterioration, and avoiding extraordinary expenses. This should start from the installation of laboratory equipment.
3. The maintenance and calibration program for laboratory equipment should include not only measurement stations with all their equipment (calibration and peripherals, power sources, lighting systems, and environmental condition control) but also central facilities (control center, laboratories, maintenance areas, and storage of parts, consumables, and equipment).
4. The application of the maintenance program is a dynamic process that should be updated during the familiarization stage with laboratory equipment when new models are acquired or when there are changes.
5. In general, preventive maintenance should incorporate all documented records of routine activities, calibrations, inspections, as well as corrective maintenance actions performed due to failures or unplanned events.