Meters and Preventive Maintenance
Meters record usage — hours run, miles driven, copies produced, cycles completed — and drive usage-based maintenance.
Where to find it
Architect Panel → ERP - Operations:
- Asset Meters — readings, with rollover handled
- Maintenance Schedules — what should be done and how often
- Assets — the asset each meter belongs to
Rollover is handled
Meters wrap. A five-digit hour meter goes from 99999 to 0, and a naive system reads that as negative usage of 99999 hours — which would either raise a nonsense alert or, worse, reset the maintenance clock.
Rollover is handled explicitly, so a wrapped reading is interpreted as continued usage. You need do nothing beyond recording readings honestly, including the one after the wrap.
Recording readings
Readings are dated observations, not a current value that gets overwritten. Keeping the history is what shows usage rate over time, which is what makes a usage-based schedule predictable rather than reactive.
Record at a regular cadence. Sporadic readings make the interval between services a guess, and the guess is always optimistic.
Scheduling maintenance
- By elapsed time — every six months regardless of use. Right for things that degrade whether used or not, and for statutory inspections.
- By usage — every 500 hours or 10,000 miles. Right for wear-driven servicing.
Many assets need both, whichever falls first. A vehicle serviced every 10,000 miles or twelve months should not go three years because it was little used.
Due and overdue
Review the due list as a forward plan, not an overdue report. The point of preventive maintenance is acting before failure; a list looked at only when something breaks is a maintenance log with extra steps.
Connect it to time and stock
Where maintenance is carried out in-house, book time against the asset and issue parts from stock against the same job. That gives you the real cost of ownership — which is the figure that informs whether to keep repairing or replace, and it is almost never available otherwise.
Worked example
A plant hire company services machines every 250 hours or annually. Operators record hours weekly. The due list is reviewed each Monday and jobs scheduled a fortnight ahead. Parts and labour book against the asset, so after two years the maintenance cost per machine is a report rather than an argument — and two machines are replaced on the evidence.
Recommendations
- Read meters on a fixed cadence, not when somebody remembers.
- Use both time and usage triggers where either could come first.
- Review the due list weekly, forward-looking.
- Book time and parts to the asset so cost of ownership is real.