The report comes in
By phone, by email, or opened by the client directly from their own access. Recorded with who reported it, which asset, and what’s happening.
Feature
Today’s breakdown is data for the one six months from now
Everyone repairs things. The difference between a team that’s always firefighting and one that stops having fires comes down to whether every repair leaves a written record of what failed, why, and how much it cost.
What is corrective maintenance?
Corrective maintenance is what you do once something has already failed: repairing a breakdown, replacing a broken part, restoring a service that went down. It differs from preventive maintenance in that it isn’t planned, and that’s where its two problems come from: it interrupts whatever was scheduled, and because it’s done in a hurry, it’s the work that gets recorded worst. It’s also the most expensive per intervention, since it includes the cost of the downtime on top of the repair itself. No operation aims to eliminate it entirely — there will always be the unforeseeable — but it should aim for it not to be the bulk of the work.
Why the same breakdown keeps happening
Almost never because nobody knows how to fix it. Because nobody can prove how many times it’s happened.
- The repair was done, but the report just says "checked and working".
- Nobody knows whether this pump has failed before, or how many times.
- The part that was needed wasn’t in stock, and that wait is recorded nowhere.
- A breakdown from wear isn’t distinguished from one caused by misuse, so the cause never gets fixed.
- When it’s time to decide whether replacing the equipment pays off, there’s nothing to back it up.
From the call to the close-out
Corrective work has a path, and every step that leaves no trace is lost information.
It becomes a work order
The incident generates its work order, with priority, owner and target time. Reports stop living in an inbox.
The technician arrives with context
With the asset’s history in front of them. Knowing that same machine failed two months ago changes the diagnosis.
What was used gets recorded
Hours, travel and materials against the work order. If a part was missing, the order gets marked pending material instead of being closed halfway.
And what was done
Problem, solution, photos and signature. What lets you answer when someone asks about that intervention a year from now.
It feeds the history
Every closed breakdown accumulates on the asset’s record. It’s what turns a hunch into a data-backed argument.
What makes a well-recorded corrective job useful
Specific fields that later answer specific questions.
Cause of the stoppage
Why the equipment stopped, not just what was done to it. It’s the field that lets you separate normal wear from an operating problem.
Response time and target time
How long it took to respond versus what was committed to, with the deviation calculated. It’s what gets checked when there’s a contract involved.
Under warranty or not
Marking an intervention as covered by warranty changes who pays for it, and it’s better for that to be a data field than an email.
Pending material
A breakdown waiting on a part isn’t quite resolved and isn’t simply open either: it has its own status, so it doesn’t disappear from the radar.
Against the specific asset
Not against "the site" or "the facility". The repair is charged to the equipment itself, the only unit indicators can actually be calculated on.
Anomalies detected
What the technician notices in passing that isn’t part of the job. It’s the channel through which one corrective job prevents the next.
Shall we look at it with your way of working?
Leave your details and we will get in touch to see whether we fit. No commitment, no lock-in period.
When corrective maintenance starts to say something
With a year of breakdowns recorded against its asset, answers appear that used to be opinion. MTBF and MTTR per machine tell you how long it lasts between failures and how long it takes to get it back into service. Accumulated cost per asset tells you when repairing stops paying off versus replacing. The anomalies report shows what technicians spotted that nobody turned into work. And the work order log lets you compare periods: if corrective work goes down while preventive goes up, the plan is working; if both go up, there’s a problem that isn’t about maintenance.
The goal isn’t zero corrective maintenance
Worth saying, because the opposite gets sold a lot. A plant with no unplanned breakdowns at all is probably over-maintaining: replacing parts that still worked and stopping lines that didn’t need to stop. There’s no universal balance point; it depends on what downtime costs in your case. What can be said is that without recording corrective work properly there’s no way to know where you stand, and that a preventive plan designed without looking at breakdown history is a plan based on the manufacturer’s catalog and on gut feeling.
Frequently asked questions
Can urgent corrective work be told apart from work that can wait?
Yes, and it’s worth doing from the start. A breakdown that stops production and a minor defect someone notes to fix when convenient are both corrective, but they’re planned the opposite way and cost very different amounts. Separating them lets you batch the deferred ones into scheduled visits, which is where a good chunk of the savings comes from.
How does a breakdown enter the system?
As an incident — opened by your team, by the client through their own access, or received by email — which then becomes a work order with its priority and owner. You can also create the work order directly when the report comes in by phone.
Can you tell how many times a piece of equipment has failed?
Yes. Every intervention is charged to the specific asset, so its record accumulates the full history. That’s where reliability indicators and accumulated equipment cost come from.
What happens if a part is missing to finish the repair?
The work order gets marked pending material instead of being closed halfway or left open with no explanation. That way a breakdown waiting on a part is distinguished from one that’s simply being ignored.
Does it calculate MTBF and MTTR?
Yes, they’re available reports and get calculated from the recorded work orders. Their reliability depends directly on interventions being recorded promptly and against the right asset.
Can I track committed response times?
The work order stores the target time, the estimated time and the deviation, plus the response time itself. That’s what lets you review compliance when there’s a maintenance contract involved.
Bring us a breakdown that keeps recurring
In the demo we walk through it end to end and see what would have needed to be recorded to explain why it keeps coming back.