Which maintenance type primarily aims at correcting equipment defects after they occur?

Corrective maintenance is specifically designed to address and resolve equipment deficiencies and failures after they have occurred. This type of maintenance is reactive in nature, meaning that it is performed only after an issue arises, as opposed to trying to prevent it. The goal of corrective maintenance is to return equipment to operational condition as quickly as possible, minimizing downtime and restoring functionality.

In contrast to preventive maintenance, which aims to prevent failures through scheduled maintenance tasks, and predictive maintenance, which utilizes data and analytics to foresee potential failures before they happen, corrective maintenance solely focuses on fixing problems once they have manifested. Reliability-centered maintenance is more comprehensive, involving strategies to ensure that systems continue to perform reliably over their entire lifecycle. All of these other maintenance types serve proactive functions designed to reduce the likelihood of failure, while corrective maintenance is a necessary action taken after a failure has already occurred.