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1.0 INTRODUCTION
The overall and overarching goal of any company’s establishment is long time survival
and the ability to produce useful outputs and provide satisfactory service to its customers.
But due to the
- Equipment parts wear out and corrosion
- Atmospheric conditions that destroy equipment parts and materials
- Aging affects materials and their behavior
- Improper handling affects equipment and materials
the functionality of equipment’s is affected.
If proper actions against those mention above causes of failures would not be taken, there
would be breakdown in the service providing and materials deteriorate unduly resulting in loss or
total stoppage of service it provides. Hence there is a permanent necessity that all means of
production be:-
- Used
- Checked
- Serviced
- Tended
In order to give the full function which they are designed for, the last three necessities
constitute what is called maintenance, whereas the former is operational.
From engineering point of view, the management of the means of production has two elements.
First, it must be maintained, and second, from time to time it may also need to be modified.
To achieve the primary objective of satisfying a demand, it is very important that
equipment’s are giving the right quantity and quality services at the right time and right cost. For
these requirements to be met, equipment need to be maintained in the most efficient and
economic manner. The machines and equipment must operate efficiently and effectively at the
required level of service it provides. There must be very few or no stoppages on service lines
which require effective planning, scheduling and good administration of maintenance activities.
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Maintenance requirements have an impact on service scheduling and other functions
performed to satisfying demand. Time lost due to maintenance may interfere with schedules
from the organization. Therefore, maintenance requirements should be considered in choosing
machines or equipment for replacement or increasing the capacity of installed machines and
equipment.
The maintenance department in any organization is saddled with the responsibility of the
maintenance of facilities, equipment, and machines.
1.1 DEFINITION OF MAINTENANCE
Maintenance is any activity that is carried out on any facility either to restore to or to
retain the facility in a good and acceptable working conditions. Maintenance involves all
technical and other procedures performed in order to retain the satisfactory working condition of
a machine or part or restoring it to an acceptable working condition so that the set tasks can be
performed at the scheduled time and under given conditions.
Maintenance is often not given the priority it deserves in the overall operating strategy of
a facility. Maintenance programs are managed and funded by people, and human nature seems to
abide by the old tenet, “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.” Compared to other departments,
maintenance departments have no real “product” and - as such - produce no real income. Many
managers view money spent on maintenance as money thrown down a black hole. In spite of any
life-cycle “proofs” to the contrary, managers look for ways to cut maintenance budgets first
when any other need arises; which is totally wrong.
It has been stated below that the maintenance functions stem at supporting role to keep
equipment;
(i) To operate effectively;
(ii) To maintain quality standard at all times;
(iii)To maintain the quantitative and cost standards output.
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The objectives of plant maintenance have been enumerated to include the following;
o To achieve minimum breakdown and to keep the plant in good working condition at the
lowest possible cost;
o To keep the machines and other facilities in operational level, and used at optimum (profit
making) capacity.
o To ensure the availability of the machines; buildings and services required by other
section, buildings and services required by other section of the factory for efficient
performance. The most important responsibility of plant engineering is that of maintaining
the plant facilities and equipment.
It is only when the equipment is adequately maintained that it can be expected to operate
and perform properly, and thereby yielding a high quality product at a reasonable cost.
1.2 NEED FOR MAINTENANCE
One of the factors that can ensure availability of installed facilities for efficient use is an
effective and efficient maintenance engineering system. Gone were the days when maintenance
was not given adequate attention. For any company with mechanized and automated systems,
more attention is now given to maintenance function. Therefore, the need for maintenance
increases with technological advancement in production/service providing facilities. Other
factors which seem to emphasize the need for effective maintenance system are:
(i) Strong competition
(ii) Tight production/service schedules
(iii) Increased machine utilization
(iv) Increased production/service level
Inadequate or lack of effective and efficient maintenance system especially in a
manufacturing enterprise/service providing sector gives rise to several undesirable consequences.
These consequences include:
(i) Excessive machine/equipment breakdown
(ii) Frequent emergency maintenance work
(iii) Shortened life-span of the facility
(iv) Poor use of maintenance staff
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(v) Loss in production output/service provide
(vi) Inability to meet delivery dates
(vii) Excessive overtime
(viii) Loss of lives
1.2 FUNCTIONS OF MAINTENANCE ENGINEERING
The function of maintenance engineering can be divided into primary and secondary.
The primary functions of maintenance are:
(i) Maintenance of existing machines and equipment
(ii) Maintenance of existing buildings
(iii) Inspection and lubrication of machine and equipment
(iv) Generation and distribution of utilities e.g. clean and dry air, hot water etc.
(v) Installation of new machines and equipment
(vi) Modifications of existing machines, equipment and buildings
The secondary functions include the following:
(i) Sanitation
(ii) Disposal of used items
(iii) Storekeeping
(iv) Fire protection
(v) Janitorial service
1.3 MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT
Maintenance is related to profitability through equipment output, running cost and also
through time taken for maintenance purposes. With increasing industrialization and complexity
of equipment the importance of maintenance increase as downtime and costs related to downtime
become increasingly prohibitive.
To understand maintenance and its various characteristics features, it is imperative to
know what an equipment life-cycle comprises and the factors at the various stages as they relate
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to maintenance. An equipment is considered as passing through a number of stages, the first
being design and the last one replacement. The level of maintenance activity required and
maintenance management involved at the equipment operation stage is affected by factors at
other stages through which the equipment passes. These stages are briefly discussed below
indicating how maintenance is affected by the actions undertaken at the respective stages.
Design stage
The most important features of maintenance, particularly reliability and maintainability should
be considered properly in relation to performance of equipment, capital and running costs right at
the design stage. Good maintainability and reliability characteristics are incorporated in the
system at this stage
Manufacture stage
Next to design stage it the place where reliability and maintainability can be considered but its
impact can have less impact than design stage.
Installation stage
Maintainability is an important factor to be considered during installation, for it is here that
maintenance problems become clear.
Commissioning stage
This is a stage of technical performance testing and also a stage of where primary design faults
are located and designed out. During commissioning, maintenance effectiveness can be analyzed
and changes can be effected in the system.
Operational stage
Operational stage is a stage of continued learning where maintenance plays an important role. In
this stage, mal-operation should be avoided and maintenance activities are optimized so as to
exploit the system reliability and maintainability characteristics.
Repair/Replacement stage
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Figure 1.1 Equipment life cycle
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Source: A. Kelly and M. j. Harris. Management of Industrial Maintenance, Butterworth & Co. Publishers Ltd, 1978
During the operation period or useful life of an equipment proper maintenance
management can influence resource utilization and profitability of an industrial plant.
Maintenance management is the direction and organization of resources in order to control the
availability and performance of an industrial plant to specified level. Normally, to meet the
workload in a timely and cost effective manner any maintenance management is faced with a
two dimensional problem and these are
i. Determination of size and nature of the maintenance workload and
ii. Organization and control of resources, ie. Labor, spares and equipment
1.5. FUNCTION OF MAINTENANCE WORK
The maintenance department influences plant availability directly through preventive and
corrective maintenance task.
The most basic definition of availability is expressed by the equation
Where: -
- Top – cumulative time of operation uptime
- Tdown – cumulative outage time, downtime
Downtime doesn’t consist only of the time taken for repair but also includes delays due to lack of
resources and information.
Repair time is affected by management, system or equipment maintainability as well as
engineering techniques. Mathematically, this can be stated as
, ,
Delays are influenced by organization of maintenance resources and flow of information and this
can be expressed as
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Plant availability is greatly influenced by reliability and maintainability. These
characteristics are built in at the design stage and then after affect the maintenance workload.
Causes of low reliability or maintainability can only be removed by engineering re-design which
is not the responsibility of maintenance department.
The maintenance manager influences availability through those outages which occasion
maintenance actions. The outage constitutes downtime. Figure 1.2 shows equipment time and its
constituent parts including the activities involved during maintenance.
Figure 1.3 shows downtime and its classification including the various features involved.
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Figure 1.2 Classification of equipment time activities involved
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Figure 1.3 Downtime and its constituents
1.6. CLASSIFICATION OF MAINTENANCE
Depending on the nature of maintenance workload is related to time, maintenance is broadly
classified in to two. Figure 1.4 shows the broad categories of maintenance.
Figure 1.4 Classification of maintenance
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1.6.1 Preventive Maintenance
Preventive Maintenance is the technique of minimizing untimely equipment breakdown and/or
an equipment’s condition falling below a required level of acceptability. Preventive maintenance
calls for taking equipment off-line for repair and planned intervals (time-based) or depending on
the equipment condition (condition-based). Scheduled maintenance is performed at regular
intervals for the purpose of keeping the system in a condition consistent with built-in levels of
reliability, performance and safety. As can be noted from Figure 1.4 some tasks like servicing is
carried out in the running condition while other tasks like repair/replace require taking the
equipment off-line.
Preventive maintenance helps in prolonging the life of equipment by limiting component and
system failure rates from exceeding design levels. Preventive maintenance also ensures accuracy
of equipment.
The basic reasons for undertaking preventive maintenance are the following
- Increased automation
- Reduce loss of profitability due to production delays
- Just-in-time manufacturing policy
- Production requirement for higher quality
- Reduction in equipment redundancies
- Reduced cost of maintenance
The last item, reduction in maintenance cost is achieved in many different ways:
- Reduced production downtime resulting in fewer machine breakdown
- Better prevention of equipment and increased useful life expectancy which eliminates
premature replacement of equipment/machinery
- Efficient use of maintenance labor achieved by working on schedule basis instead of
crush basis repair breakdown
- Timely routine repairs resulting in fewer large scale repairs
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- Reduced cost of repairs by reducing secondary failures, when parts fail in operation,
they usually damage other parts giving rise to secondary failures
- Reduced product rejects, rework and scrap due to better overall equipment condition
- Improved safety and quality conditions
- Identification of equipment with excessive maintenance costs indicating the need for
other measures to be taken like operator training, replacement of obsolete machinery,
adapting new and different technology
A preventive maintenance program should include periodic inspection, preplanned maintenance
activities, non-destructive testing, and maintenance to correct deficiencies found through testing
or inspection. The elements of preventive maintenance are:
Care: - Regular care of normally operating subsystems and components requires such activities
like cleaning, lubrication, etc.
Servicing:- servicing of subsystems and components includes care along with other activities
such as filling in oil and fuel, readjustment, re-setting, adjusting, and checking
without instrument and checking without instruments.
Inspection: - Inspection of subsystems and components comprises servicing together with
checking, testing, measuring, examining. The activities carried out during
inspection are
i) Checking of function (comparison with required data), and
ii) Gauging (use of measuring instruments).
Repair: - Repair activities include replacement of damaged and destroyed parts or those nearing
wear-out and reconditioning of components. Repair action normally requires
disassembling and assembling of components.
The frequency of performing regular care, inspection and servicing to prevent degradation of
reliability depends on the characteristics of the components. The frequency of performing repairs
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depends on the wear out characteristics of system components. Optimum replacement or repair
times can be scheduled in advance.
In order to have a successful preventive maintenance program, the focus should be on cleaning,
lubrication and correcting deficiencies found through inspection and testing. Repair/replacement
of components should be done by highly qualified maintenance personnel to avoid maintenance-
induced problems. It should be noted here that the risk of preventive maintenance program are
those maintenance tasks that may result from a faulty preventive maintenance activities; these
are preventive maintenance-induced problems.
1.6.2 Corrective Maintenance
Corrective maintenance is defined as that which is carried out when equipment fails or falls
below acceptable condition while in operation. Basically, corrective maintenance is an
emergency maintenance which is carried out after breakdown, thus it is a shutdown activity.
Corrective maintenance is an off-schedule maintenance required by system in-service failure or
malfunction. System operation is restored as soon as possible by replacing, repairing or adjusting
the component which interrupted service.
1.7 Maintenance Objective, Planning and Control
The proper maintenance objective is the minimization of the sum of plant unavailability and
resource costs through the proper planning and control of maintenance work. A unit is
considered to be in one of the following states:
In production ----------------------------- --------available
Undergoing repairs --------------------------------Unavailable
Waiting for repair ---------------------------------Unavailable
Undergoing preventive maintenance -----------Unavailable
A simple model of production-maintenance situation containing the essential characteristics of a
maintenance work, maintenance planning and maintenance resources is shown below
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Maintenance is presented as the operation of a pool of resources (men, spares and equipment)
directed towards controlling the level of plant availability. The maintenance resources are
divided between preventive maintenance and corrective maintenance as preventive and resources
respectively.
Maintenance objective is minimization of the resources and unavailability costs.
Unavailability cost = loss of in-service material and production loss while in repair undergoing
preventive maintenance
Or
Resource cost = corrective maintenance labor, preventive maintenance labor, maintenance
equipment spare usage and holding costs.
Figure 1.5 A general model of a maintenance system
(Source: A. Kelly and M. J. Harris, Management of Industrial Maintenance)
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An established maintenance organization and planning needs to set-up a control system to ensure
that, the plan and organization are continually updated. This control system performs three main
interrelated functions: work control, plant condition control and maintenance cost control. These
three functions are interrelated in that they are targeted at minimizing maintenance cost.
1.7.1 Work Control
This is a function of the maintenance organization and its object is to match manpower, spares
and equipment to the maintenance workload. This function includes
- Location of plant failure
- Determination of the necessary corrective action
- The setting of priorities
- Coordination and control of resources
1.7.2 Plant condition control
This function is required in order to achieve optimum performance in the long term. The function
of plant condition control is to:
- Identify the most important problems
- Diagnose causes
- Prescribe solutions
In achieving this function the alternative actions available are:
- Modification of preventive maintenance policy
- Equipment re-design (especially in the early period of equipment life)
- Changes in production policy
1.7.3 Maintenance cost control
Its main objective is to minimize the sum of costs related to maintenance activities. The function
of maintenance cost control is:
- To identify high cost areas of the plant
- To monitor the trend of maintenance effectiveness
- To provide information for maintenance decision making
- To facilitate maintenance budgeting
