Definition
Uses condition signals such as vibration, temperature, oil, and current to track equipment degradation and schedules repair on actual condition before failure occurs, as opposed to cycle-based preventive maintenance. The official DBS TPM spectrum (REV5 p21) places preventive and predictive maintenance on the same tier, to be chosen by equipment type and used together, rather than as a fixed ladder where preventive must be mastered before predictive.
In detail
Predictive and preventive maintenance differ in one word: one acts on a cycle, the other on condition. Acting on condition means no longer discarding parts that still have life, at the price of reliable monitoring and decision thresholds, and thresholds come from long-term data; where that is missing, staying with cycles is safer. The official TPM spectrum (no repair → repair after failure → repair before failure → optimized planned maintenance → eliminate the source of defects) places preventive and predictive on the same tier, chosen by equipment characteristics and often used together, while warning against over-maintenance; it remains true that installing monitoring on a floor that has not mastered cleaning, inspection, and lubrication will mostly pick up false signals from dirt and looseness. One tier higher is designing out the need for maintenance altogether.
Example in practice
A critical pump is fitted with a vibration sensor; the trend rises for two weeks and crosses the threshold, so the bearing is replaced during a planned shutdown. The removed bearing already shows early pitting, but production was never interrupted.