---
title: Basic Principles of Preventive Maintenance in SAP S/4HANA
description: Discover the key principles of preventative maintenance in SAP S/4HANA to enhance operational efficiency, reduce costs, and ensure compliance in your organization.
---

[Learn SAP from the Experts | The SAP PRESS Blog](https://blog.sap-press.com)

# [Basic Principles of Preventive Maintenance in SAP S/4HANA](https://blog.sap-press.com/basic-principles-of-preventative-maintenance-in-sap-s4hana)

 Written by [SAP PRESS](https://blog.sap-press.com/author/sap-press) | Sep 7, 2026, 1:00:00 PM

Preventive maintenance always involves effort, both in its planning and execution.

 

Never­theless, there are many reasons why you must or should perform preventive maintenance in your company, including the following:

- **Legal requirements:** Legislation on plant safety or industrial health and safety may require you to inspect or maintain your technical system regularly.
- **Quality assurance:** The quality of a product depends largely on the condition of the production facility in which it is manufactured.
- **Fewer malfunctions:** One of the most important tasks in maintenance planning is to keep a production facility continuously available over the long term. Effective preventive maintenance helps ensure that a technical system does not fail and reduces unnecessary costs arising from repairs, system replacements, or production downtimes.
- **Environmental protection requirements:** Effective preventive maintenance can help prevent system breakdowns that lead to envi­ronmental impacts.
- **Manufacturer recommendations:** Your technical system’s manufacturer may recommend certain procedures to ensure that the system always runs optimally.
- **Improved capacity utilization:** Preventive maintenance provides a work list that helps you use your workshops more consistently, for example, because you have fewer breakdown-related repair tasks to handle.
- **Lower maintenance costs:** Whether preventative maintenance can decrease your maintenance costs is debatable and depends largely on whether you’ve already reached the optimum intensity of pre­ventive maintenance.

Whether you're using [SAP S/4HANA](https://learning.sap-press.com/sap-s4hana-logistics) or another logistics system, preventive maintenance and repair costs are inversely proportional and depend on the intensity of preventive maintenance (see figure below), as follows:

- The higher the intensity level of preventive maintenance, the higher the preventive main­tenance costs.
- The higher the intensity level of preventive maintenance, the lower the costs for repairs.

 

At the optimum intensity level, W0, the overall costs of plant maintenance are minimal. Follow-up costs that may arise from inadequate preventive maintenance (for example, re­starting costs) are not included in this cost consideration, since they are considered oppor­tunity costs only.

 

There are three different types of preventive maintenance (see next figure), as follows:

- **Time-based maintenance:** The preventive maintenance task is triggered after a certain period of time has expired (for example, every six months).
- **Performance-based maintenance:** The preventive maintenance task is triggered when a certain performance threshold is reached (for example, every 10,000 miles).
- **Condition-based maintenance:** The preventive maintenance task is triggered when a certain diagnostic value has not been reached or has been exceeded (for example, a pressure lower than 15 bar or tem­perature higher than 85°C).

 

*Editor’s note*: This post has been adapted from a section of the book [*Plant Maintenance with SAP S/4HANA: Business User Guide*](https://www.sap-press.com/plant-maintenance-with-sap-business-user-guide_6263/?utm_source=sappressblog&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=Blogs&utm_term=chapter5&utm_content=2819)by [Karl Liebstückel](https://www.linkedin.com/in/karl-liebst%C3%BCckel-824b3725/) and [Markus Seidl](https://www.linkedin.com/in/markusseidl/). Prof. Dr. Liebstückel was a professor of information management and business software at the Technical University Würzburg-Schweinfurt in Germany, and he has approximately 40 years of experience in the field of enterprise asset management. Markus is a chief solution architect at SAP with more than 25 years of experience in the field of enterprise asset management.

 

This post was originally published 9/2026.

[View full post](https://blog.sap-press.com/basic-principles-of-preventative-maintenance-in-sap-s4hana)

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