Corrective Maintenance

Corrective maintenance can be defined as the maintenance which is required when an item has failed or worn out, to bring it back to working order. Corrective maintenance is carried out on all items where the consequences of failure or wearing out are not significant and the cost of this maintenance is not greater than preventative maintenance.

Corrective Maintenance activity may consist of repair, restoration or replacement of equipment. This activity will be the result of a regular inspection, which identifies the failure in time for corrective maintenance to be planned and scheduled, then performed during a routine maintenance shutdown.

Corrective maintenance is a form of system maintenance which is performed after a fault or problem emerges in a system, with the goal of restoring operability to the system. In some cases, it can be impossible to predict or prevent a failure, making corrective maintenance the only option.


The process of corrective maintenance begins with the failure and a diagnosis of the failure to determine why the failure appeared. The diagnostic process can include a physical inspection of a system, the use of a diagnostic computer to evaluate the system, interviews with system users, and a number of other steps 


The next step is replacement of damaged components or software. In some cases, the damage may be repairable, either in situ or by removing the item in question and doing repairs off site. In other instances, full replacement with a new item may be required to restore the system's functionality


After the corrective maintenance is performed, a technician verifies that the fix has worked by testing the system. This may be done in several stages to confirm that the system is operational slowly before overloading it with tasks. Verification is especially important on systems sent in to a facility for repair, as the technicians want to be sure that when they are sent back out, the users will be happy with the standard of the work performed.