What type of maintenance involves scheduled servicing of equipment to prevent failures?

Preventive maintenance is the practice that focuses on scheduled servicing of equipment to avert failures and ensure operational readiness. It involves regular inspections, adjustments, and replacements of parts at predefined intervals, which helps to identify and address potential issues before they lead to equipment malfunction. By maintaining a routine schedule, preventive maintenance minimizes unexpected breakdowns, extends the lifespan of equipment, and ensures safety and reliability.

In contrast, corrective maintenance addresses issues after they have occurred, emergency maintenance is performed in response to urgent failures, and predictive maintenance relies on condition-monitoring tools to predict when maintenance should be performed to avoid failures. Each of these practices has its own specific objectives and applications, but preventive maintenance stands out as a proactive approach to maintaining equipment reliability.