While both curative and corrective maintenance occur after a failure, there is a crucial difference in their scope and intent.

Corrective maintenance focuses on the immediate fix: replacing the broken part to get the system running again.

Curative maintenance goes deeper.

Curative maintenance involves a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) to understand *why* the failure happened in the first place.

Its goal is to cure the underlying problem, not just treat the symptom.

For example: - **Corrective:** A tire repeatedly goes flat.

The corrective action is to patch or replace the tire each time.

- **Curative:** The technician investigates and discovers the tires are consistently being punctured by debris in a specific part of the yard.

The curative action is to implement a new cleaning procedure for that area.

The problem is solved permanently.

Curative maintenance is a cornerstone of continuous improvement.

It requires more initial effort in analysis but leads to significant long-term benefits by increasing overall reliability, reducing recurring failures, and lowering total maintenance costs.