Corrective maintenance can be defined as a maintenance

Maintenance, Repair and Operations

Maintenance, repair, and operations or maintenance, repair, and overhaul involves fixing any sort of mechanical or electrical device should it become out of order or broken...

task performed to identify, isolate, and rectify a fault so that the failed equipment, machine, or system can be restored to an operational condition within the tolerances or limits established for in-service operations.

A French official norm defines "corrective maintenance" as maintenance which is carried out after failure detection and is aimed at restoring an asset to a condition in which it can perform its intended function (NF EN 13306 X 60-319 standard, June 2001).

Corrective maintenance can be subdivided into "immediate corrective maintenance" (in which work starts immediately after a failure) and "deferred corrective maintenance" (in which work is delayed in conformance to a given set of maintenance rules).