What is the mission of the modern maintenance department? There are as many different answers as there are companies. They range from fixing breakdowns to serving the customer. Some firms are intent on reducing downtime and others focus on cost control. When asked what you need to do to improve your performance, the answer is universally \\\"we need to increase preventive, predictive or condition based maintenance.\\\" Maintenance professionals feel that problem is that their systems need to be improved, their PM systems need to be sharpened or they need to add more sophisticated predictive technology. The mission of the maintenance department is to provide excellent support for its customers by reducing and eventually eliminating the need for maintenance services.