THE IMPORTANCE OF PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE OF COMMERCIAL FITNESS EQUIPMENT

Preventive maintenance of fitness equipment is a scheduled set of maintenance actions including visual inspections, lubrications, adjustments, electrical tests, if necessary, and an operation test of the equipment involved..

Its purpose is detect worn parts before they fail in service, to detect parts that are out of adjustment that may lead to equipment failure in service, if ignored and to keep the equipment safe.

Preventive maintenance (PM) will not eliminate component failure, nor will it eliminate downtime. However, it will minimize downtime by heading off many failures before they happen. PM will also help to reduce costs in the long run because when worn parts can be replaced before they have a chance to damage other components. As an example, a treadmill that has a worn running belt and deck, causes the drive motor to work harder and harder to handle the increased work load as the friction between the worn running belt and the worn deck increases. That in turn, draws more current through the treadmill's motor controller and power supply. The continued use of the treadmill in this condition will eventually destroy the treadmill's drive motor, motor controller or both. The running belt and deck will have to be replaced anyway, but having to replace a motor controller or a drive motor on a commercial treadmill could add several hundred dollars to the cost of the repair. A planned replacement of a running belt and deck could be scheduled for a light traffic period and be done by taking the treadmill out of service for an hour , while the parts are replaced. In contrast, an unexpected failure would mean that the treadmill might be out of service for a couple of days while the necessary replacement parts are obtained and installed. Although the details differ, similar things happen to elliptical cross trainers, exercise bikes, rowers, steppers and strength equipment as well.

With strength equipment, the unanticipated failure of a cable will cause the piece of equipment to be out of service until a repair can be made. Had the worn or damaged cable been noted during preventive maintenance, the failure could have been prevented and the downtime minimized. The repair costs would have been the same in either case, but the lawsuit that could result from the failure of just one cable could put a gym out of business!

Good preventive maintenance of exercise equipment will reduce the operating costs, minimized equipment downtime, reduce the likelihood of liability suits and improve the quality of equipment performance by eliminating those nuisance troubles, like noises, adjustment pop-pins not working properly, wobbly seats, loose pads, missing weight selection pins, resistance issues, etc.

Preventive maintenance definitely has advantages over waiting for failures to occur. Even the best fitness equipment needs preventive maintenance to keep it safe and operating properly.