Types of Reactive Maintenance — Run-to-Failure, Emergency, Corrective & How to Optimise Each

Reactive maintenance isn't a single "fix-it-when-it-breaks" approach. Understanding the different types from deliberate run-to-failure to urgent emergency work allows maintenance teams to apply the right controls, minimise costs, and reduce operational risk for each scenario.

What is Reactive Maintenance?‍

Reactive maintenance is a strategy where work is performed on an asset only after it has failed or malfunctioned. It can be a planned, cost-saving choice for non-critical items or an unplanned, high-cost response to critical breakdowns.

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A Taxonomy of Reactive Maintenance

Not all failures are created equal. While "reactive maintenance" is often used as a catch-all term, it encompasses several distinct approaches. Recognising the different types of reactive maintenance is the first step towards controlling them. A deliberate run-to-failure vs corrective vs emergency strategy requires understanding these nuances.

Let's break down each of these types to understand their triggers, risks, and controls.

1. Run-to-Failure Maintenance

This is the only truly planned form of reactive maintenance. It is a conscious decision to extract the maximum life from an asset without investing in preventive care.

• Triggers: The asset reaches the end of its functional life and stops working completely.
• Typical Asset Classes: Low-cost, non-critical, or redundant items. Examples include light bulbs, office furniture, disposable filters, and small, non-essential pumps with backups.
• Cost & Risk Profile:
  
  • Cost: Very low. The only costs are replacement parts and minimal labour. No preventive maintenance budget is allocated.
  • Risk: Near zero, provided the asset has been correctly classified as non-critical. The primary risk is misclassifying an asset and having it fail with unforeseen consequences.
• Operational Controls:
  
  • SOP Snippet: "Upon failure of Unit X, retrieve replacement from stores. Isolate power, replace units, and dispose of failed components. No repair attempt necessary."
  • Control: Maintain a sufficient "min-max" inventory of replacement parts to avoid delays.
• Suggested KPIs:
  
  • Stockout Rate: How often is a replacement part unavailable when needed?
  • Total Replacement Cost: Tracks the annual spend on these disposable assets.
• Minimisation Tactics: The goal is not to minimise run-to-failure for designated assets, but to ensure it is the most cost-effective choice. This involves periodic reviews to confirm the cost of replacement remains lower than the cost of potential preventive actions.

2. Emergency Maintenance 

This is the most chaotic and expensive form of reactive maintenance. It is the fire-fighting that gives the strategy a bad name.

• Triggers: A sudden, unexpected breakdown of a critical asset. This could be a catastrophic failure, a safety system alert, or a major quality deviation.
• Typical Asset Classes: Production-critical machinery (e.g., main conveyors, reactors, packaging lines), essential facility systems (HVAC in a data centre, main electrical panels), and safety equipment.
• Cost & Risk Profile:
  
  • Cost: Extremely high. This includes production downtime, overtime labour, expedited parts shipping, and potential collateral damage to adjacent equipment.
  • Risk: Severe. Includes immediate safety hazards to personnel, environmental breaches, significant production losses, and reputational damage.
• Operational Controls:
  
  • SOP Snippet: "P1 EMERGENCY: Isolate all energy sources (LOTO). Assess immediate hazards. Contact Maintenance Supervisor and Production Lead. Refer to Emergency Repair Procedure ER-001."
  • Control: Implement a strict triage system. Have emergency response kits ("crash carts") and clear call-out procedures for key personnel and vendors.
• Suggested KPIs:
  
  • Mean Time to Repair (MTTR): The key metric. How fast can you restore service?
  • Percentage of Emergency Work: Should be less than 20% of total maintenance hours. If it is rising, your proactive strategies are failing.
• Minimisation Tactics:
  
  • Root Cause Analysis (RCA): Every emergency repair must be followed by an RCA to understand why it happened. See [Art #2: Reactive Maintenance Guide] for more.
  • Shift to Proactive: Use RCA findings to justify moving the asset to a preventive or predictive maintenance schedule.

To reduce emergency repairs, you must shift from a reactive to a proactive mindset. This involves conducting Root Cause Analysis (RCA) on all critical failures to identify underlying issues, implementing a robust preventive maintenance programme for critical assets, and using predictive technologies like vibration analysis to anticipate faults before they occur.

3. Corrective Maintenance

This is the most common of the corrective maintenance types. It involves fixing something that is broken but not currently causing a major disruption. It is reactive, but not an emergency.

• Triggers: An operator reports a fault, an inspection reveals a problem, or a sensor indicates an anomaly. The key is that the asset is still functioning, albeit in a degraded state (e.g., a pump is making a strange noise but still working).
• Typical Asset Classes: A wide range of equipment. It could be a semi-critical motor with a backup, a leaky pipe in a non-essential area, or a machine producing slightly out-of-spec products.
• Cost & Risk Profile:
  
  • Cost: Moderate. Higher than planned work but far lower than emergency work. You can schedule the repair, avoiding overtime and rush fees for parts.
  • Risk: Low to moderate. The primary risk is that the minor fault escalates into a major emergency if left for too long.
• Operational Controls:
  
  • SOP Snippet: "Work Order #1234: Replace noisy bearing on Pump P-10B. Schedule work for the next planned maintenance day. Procure bearing kit from stores."
  • Control: A robust work order management system is essential. Faults are logged, prioritised, planned, and scheduled. This turns an unplanned event into planned work.
• Suggested KPIs:
  
  • Backlog of Corrective Work: How many known faults are waiting to be fixed?
  • Schedule Compliance: Of the corrective work planned, what percentage was completed on time?
• Minimisation Tactics:
  
  • Improved Inspections: Train operators to spot and report small issues earlier.
  • Close-Loop Work Orders: Ensure that when a corrective work order is closed, the technician notes the likely cause, feeding data back into your system to improve preventive plans.

4. Opportunistic Maintenance

This is a smart, cost-saving tactic. It involves performing unplanned repairs during a window of opportunity created by another event.

• Triggers: Another piece of equipment fails, or there is a scheduled production shutdown (e.g., for a product changeover or a holiday).
• Typical Asset Classes: Any asset with a known, non-urgent fault that is located on or near a line that is already down.
• Cost & Risk Profile:
  
  • Cost: Low. The primary cost driver downtime is already accounted for. You are simply using the "free" downtime to perform other work.
  • Risk: Minimal. The main risk is trying to do too much and extending the original downtime.
• Operational Controls:
  
  • SOP Snippet: "While Line 3 is down for PM on the filler, inspect and replace the worn conveyor belt on the adjacent packing unit."
  • Control: Maintain an up-to-date backlog of corrective maintenance tasks, sorted by equipment location. When a line goes down, the supervisor can quickly see what other nearby work can be completed.
• Suggested KPIs:
  
  • Number of Opportunistic Tasks Completed: Tracks how effectively you are using unplanned downtime.
• Minimisation Tactics: The goal is to maximise opportunistic maintenance, not minimise it. It turns costly downtime into productive maintenance time.

Risk Mitigation Playbook

No matter the type, reactive maintenance carries risk. Here's a quick playbook to control it:

1. Classify Your Assets: Formally decide which assets are suitable for a run-to-failure strategy and which are critical.
2. Standardise Work: Create clear Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for common reactive repairs.
3. Manage Your Spares: For every reactive strategy, there must be a corresponding spares strategy.
4. Train Your Team: Ensure technicians are trained in fault-finding and safe emergency repair procedures.
5. Analyse Failures: Never let a failure go to waste. Perform RCAs on critical breakdowns to prevent them from happening again.

Example Scenarios

• Scenario 1 (Run-to-Failure): A light bulb burns out in the administrative office. An employee submits a ticket. The facilities team replaces the bulb from a stock held in a supply cupboard. Total downtime is zero, and the cost is less than £5.
• Scenario 2 (Emergency): The main gearbox on a factory's primary production line seizes at 2 AM. Production stops instantly. A specialist technician is called in on overtime, and a replacement gearbox is rushed from a supplier via an expensive courier. Total cost runs into tens of thousands of pounds due to lost production.
• Scenario 3 (Corrective): During a routine operator inspection, a technician notices a hydraulic hose is weeping fluid. It's not a major leak, so they log a corrective work order. The planner schedules the hose replacement for the following week during a scheduled cleaning cycle, avoiding any production stoppage.

KPI Mapping for Reactive Maintenance

Different strategies require different metrics for success. For a deep dive, see [Art #1: Maintenance Metrics That Matter].