Step 5: Do the appropriate corrective maintenance

We've all felt stupid after spending hours narrowing the problem down to something that should have been corrective maintenance. The trick is to determine what is appropriate corrective maintenance. A specific action is appropriate corrective maintenance if:

Company policy is that the action must be taken before returning to the customer.
It's likely to cause the problem, easy to do, and is a maintenance item.
It's a possible cause, a not too difficult maintenance item, and the problem is intermittent.

Note that corrective maintenance is one of the few weapons we have against that scourge of troubleshooters, the intermittent problem. Often the only economical solution is to do all corrective maintenance, then tell the customer it might be fixed and to observe it for a time.

NOTE: The entire February 1998 Troubleshooting Professional Magazine details the Corrective Maintenance step, which back in 1998 was termed "General Maintenance". You can see it at
http://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/9802.htm.

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