Preventive maintenance (or preventative maintenance) is proactive maintenance regularly performed on a piece of equipment to reduce the chance of it failing during operation. The goal is to perform some maintenance steps to avoid the asset failing during operation. For example, the annual service on a car is preventive maintenance. The oil is changed proactively, so it doesn't fail during operation and cause a major engine issue. This maintenance approach is intermediate in complexity between reactive (or run-to-failure) maintenance and predictive maintenance.