It doesn't matter what industry you're in, keeping maintenance schedules up to date on capital equipment is one of the most critical aspects of every company's infrastructure. Its also one of the most boring responsibilities your staff has to fulfill.
The longer your equipment spends in uptime, the more complacent your staff will become about upkeep. Before long, the slackers you have on staff (yes, you have some) will resort to pencil-whipping manual or digital checkmarks in your logs suggesting a maintenance procedure was done when it wasn't. Only when the instrument breaks down (it will) and wreaks havoc on your processes and production will the complacent become diligent again. When the crisis is over and uptime is restored, the clock starts all over again. In time, the pencil-whippers get lazy and systems break down again.
It's a waveform plaguing far too many workplaces.
But it's not just instrumentation that breaks down when management doesn't discipline its pencil-whippers, it's staff morale. Your top performers know who's falsifying maintenance records. They don't miss much. Slackers can't hide from top performers. That's part of what makes them top performers.
When they bring it to your attention, you'd better act decisively. Do your due diligence, identify who's complacent and provide the proper motivation. That will not only keep your instruments happy, it secures the longevity of your champions. They thrive where discipline and oversight thrives, and they disembark from where it doesn't.
If you don't act decisively, you've given your best people permission to consider you an accomplice to mediocrity. Sooner or later, they'll realize (correctly) the only standards they are upholding are their own, and laziness has opened a franchise where they work.
Eventually, they will leave and nobody is left to uphold the standards you pretend to stand for.
Mere managers are used to downtime, and are often passed over for promotions and additional responsibilities because they are so good at handling the crises of equipment malfunctions their lack of oversight creates. Who would reassign them? It would be too disruptive to the company.