Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering

Plant maintenance strategy: evidence from four British manufacturing firms

Fang Lee Cooke

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Fang Lee Cooke, (2003),"Plant maintenance strategy: evidence from four British manufacturing firms",
Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering, Vol. 9 Iss 3 pp. 239 - 249
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Plant maintenance strategy:

evidence from four British
manufacturing firms
Fang Lee Cooke

Plant
maintenance
strategy
239

Manchester School of Management, UMIST, Manchester, UK

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Keywords Maintenance, Manufacturing industries, United Kingdom

Abstract The nature of maintenance work has changed as a result of a huge increase in the
number and variety of physical assets to be maintained, increasing automation and complexity,
new maintenance techniques and changing views on maintenance organisation and
responsibilities. Maintenance philosophy has evolved from reactive to preventive and later to a
proactive approach. However, maintenance function is still largely seen as a ``necessary evil'' by
many companies. What is their maintenance strategy in an increasingly competitive world? This
paper first reviews the development of the maintenance philosophy. It then reports the case study
findings of the maintenance strategies adopted by four large and medium-sized British
manufacturing and processing companies. The paper concludes that production pressure has
forced these companies to resort to reactive maintenance, a technique which is counterproductive
for the long-term performance of the plant.

Practical implication
This paper examines the maintenance practice of four large and medium-sized
manufacturing and processing companies in the UK. It identifies the strengths
and weaknesses of each of these plants in terms of their plant maintenance
function at both the strategic level and the operational level. Although difficult
to generalise at a national level, the paper sheds light on the maintenance
culture in these plants and highlights a number of common weaknesses shared
among them in their maintenance management. It can be argued that these
weaknesses may be characteristic of the British operating culture and business
environment. The findings and recommendations of this study therefore have
strong practical implications for other manufacturing and processing firms in
the UK.
Introduction
The nature of maintenance work has changed in recent decades as a result of a
huge increase in the number and variety of physical assets to be maintained,
increasing automation and complexity, new maintenance techniques and
changing views on maintenance organisation and responsibilities (Moubray,
1997). In plants where machines are inter-linked and operate continuously,
maintenance workers may be under constant pressure to keep the equipment
running as the breakdown of one piece of equipment may cause further
stoppage upstream or downstream. At the same time, maintenance philosophy
and technology have been changing rapidly during recent years against a
background of strong bottom line profit orientation, escalating maintenance

Journal of Quality in Maintenance

Engineering
Vol. 9 No. 3, 2003
pp. 239-249
# MCB UP Limited
1355-2511
DOI 10.1108/13552510310493693

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240

costs in absolute terms (in part due to integration and sophistication of the
machines) and tightening health and safety legislation (Dunn, 1987; Gharbi and
Kenne, 2000; Lofsten, 2000). The idea that fixed-interval preventive
maintenance is right for all equipment is giving way to reliability-based
methods (Moubray, 1997; Sander and Wang, 2000; Percey and Kobbacy, 2000).
The economic use of plant and equipment, therefore, relies on an effective
maintenance strategy adopted by the company. The importance of asset
reliability at any particular time can be critical and can be enhanced by good
maintenance procedures. It is worth pointing out that the financial benefits of
sound, planned maintenance, real though they are, are not the only advantages.
Other benefits, though less quantifiable in some cases, are equally substantial.
For example, high reliability and availability of well-maintained machines can
enhance the morale of the workforce, as constant machine breakdowns can be
immensely frustrating.
Unfortunately, many managers consider maintenance as a ``necessary evil''
and fail to recognise that significant contributions can be made by the
maintenance function towards improved productivity (Patton, 1980). It is
widely reported in governmental surveys and academic studies that
maintenance in British firms is not as efficient and effective as it could be. The
maintenance function is commonly regarded as a nuisance. ``In a greater part of
industry, maintenance is neglected both of plant and buildings'' (Hodges, 1996,
p. 123). The maintenance management philosophy ``has developed by
evolutionary rather than revolutionary means'' (Parkes, 1970, p. 1) and had not
made a start until this century was well under way. Only in the most recent
years, maintenance in practice has gradually developed into a subject in its
own right, linking engineering and management as the two key aspects in its
business process (Husband, 1986).
This paper first reviews the development of the maintenance philosophy. It
then reports the case study findings of the maintenance strategies adopted by
four British manufacturing and processing companies. The paper concludes
that production pressure has forced many companies to resort to reactive
maintenance, a technique which is counterproductive for the long-term
performance of the plant.
The development of maintenance philosophies
Moubray (1997) categorises the evolution of maintenance philosophies over the
past 60 years into three generations starting from the 1930s, as summarised in
Table I.
The case study
In this research, the maintenance department of four companies were studied.
These companies include: a privatised utility company (WaterCo), two
manufacturing/processing companies (SaltCo and GlassUK), and a newspaper
printing company (PrintersLtd). All four case study firms have a plant history
of over 20 years. They all operate in a continuous production mode based on

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Generation

Time

Background and
characteristics of
equipment

Maintenance techniques
and philosophy

First
Before the Second
generation
World War

Equipment simple, overBasic and routine

designed, easy to repair
maintenance
Reactive breakdown service
(``fix it when it is broke'')

Second
Second World War
generation
late 1970s

More complex, greater

dependence of industry
on machinery
Higher maintenance cost
relative to other
operating cost

Planned preventive
maintenance
Time-based approach

Third
1980sgeneration

Continued growth in plant

complexity and
accelerating use of
automation
Downtime very costly
Just-in-time systems more
common
Rising demand for
standard of product and
service quality
Tightening legislation on
safety

Condition monitoring,
hazard studies, failure
modes and effect
analysis
Reliability-centred
maintenance (RCM) as
corner stone
Computer-aided
maintenance management
information system
Workforce multi-skilling
and teamworking
Emphasis on reliability and
availability
Proactive and strategic

Plant
maintenance
strategy
241

Table I.
The development of
maintenance
philosophies

mass production and sale at cheap cost and price. The maintenance
departments studied are responsible for plant maintenance only.
The empirical work took place between the period from March 1997 to April
1999. Follow-up visits were carried out in 2000. Both qualitative and
quantitative techniques (see Table II) were used in the data collection process
which include employee (maintenance workers) survey, semi-structured
interview, documentary analysis, observation and informal conversation. The
majority of the interviewees are maintenance technicians and their managers

Total number of craftsmen for

plant maintenance (1999)
Number of surveyees
Representing rate (%)
Interviews a

WaterCo

SaltCo

GlassUK

PrintersLtd

370
78
21
54

28
27
96
18

38
15
39
15

71
28
39
16

Note: a Interviewees include people from outside the maintenance department

Table II.
Survey and interviews
of maintenance work

JQME
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242

and supervisors. Operations managers/directors, human resource managers

and operators were also interviewed. A relatively high proportion of
maintenance technicians (between 21 per cent and 96 per cent) were surveyed
on issues concerning technological change, changing skill requirements,
methods of and preference to skill acquisition and their role in technological
change, etc. The survey was carried out after many of the interviews had been
conducted so that the interviews could inform their colleagues what the
research was about before they filled in the survey questionnaires. More
interviews (in some cases, second interviews) were conducted to follow up
relevant issues identified in the survey findings. In general, the survey findings
and those from the interviews strongly support each other.

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Research finding
WaterCo
The maintenance strategy of the plant maintenance department (PM) of
WaterCo is to move from reactive to planned maintenance, and many of its
business improvement initiatives are geared to support this direction. In 1996 a
series of external competitive audits were carried out by external consultancy
firms in order to compare PM's maintenance performance with the external
``best in class'' benchmark. These audits have later become an important source
of guidance for PM management to develop their holistic maintenance strategy.
Key concepts in the maintenance approach were adopted which include service
level agreement (SLA), planned preventive maintenance (PPM), criticality
assessment (CA), reliability-centred maintenance (RCM), computer-aided
maintenance management (CAMM), and whole life cost (WLC), etc.
So far, the maintenance approaches adopted by PM are mainly planned and
reactive maintenance that incorporate planned preventative maintenance
(PPM) and breakdown services (see Table III). PM's aim is to achieve 100 per
cent PPM with zero backlog on reactive work, and to meet agreed response
times for critical plants which are set in the SLA. At the moment, PPM is the
WaterCo

SaltCo

GlassUK

PrintersLtd

Q1. Which of the following maintenance techniques are used at work?

Techniques (percentage of replies in ``mostly'', ``often'', ``sometimes'', ``seldom'' and ``never''
respectively)
Preventive maintenance
Condition monitoring
Breakdown maintenance
RCM
Table III.
Survey findings of
maintenance techniques
adopted

71/14/9/0/0
0/0/41/33/7
6/40/32/10/5 0/4/33/30/15
33/45/10/3/0 63/26/7/0/0
5/19/24/26/15 0/0/41/15/22

7/33/53/0/0 39/32/25/0/0
0/20/47/13/0 4/32/21/18/7
40/40/13/0/0 46/39/11/0/0
0/0/53/20/7 4/11/25/25/11

Q2. Do you think that the maintenance techniques currently used by the company are appropriate?
Yes (%)
73
44
20
57
No (%)
14
37
40
25
Not sure (%)
13
19
40
14

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main method of maintenance for WaterCo. Each of the 18 maintenance units

has to achieve at least 95 per cent of their monthly PPM target. A league table is
produced each month in which each unit's performance is published internally
in the monthly maintenance managers meeting. Poor performers are ``named
and shamed'' by their colleagues. There is, therefore, a tendency for all the
maintenance managers to focus their resources on achieving the PPM target,
whereas work which may lead to significant long-term efficiency gain can be
sidelined for the time being as it is not measured (in the same way as PPM).
According to PM's management, current maintenance plans are the first
stage of a longer term strategy. From this starting point of fixed maintenance
regimes based on asset type against a calendar (PPM), it will move to
performance-based maintenance, i.e. assets will then be maintained in
accordance to what they do and how critical they are (RCM). The goal is to
move away from high levels of reactive maintenance of assets and implement
planned maintenance regimes which will result in process reliability and
performance to business needs. To achieve this, PM is working together with
asset management and other technical departments in WaterCo by pioneering
maintenance techniques such as failure mode effects analysis, reliabilitycentred maintenance and whole life cost modelling. The analysis utilises data
from the CAMM system along with the experience of operations and
maintenance personnel from the field. The CAMM system is structured to
enable storage and retrieval of historical asset data for all the 66,000 assets,
enabling performance analysis and benchmarking programmes. This
information provides quantifiable reports balancing investment decisions
against risk of plant failure. The model provides a five-year investment profile
which enables PM to evaluate where to invest its resources to provide the most
efficient service. The CAMM system has so far played a fundamental role in
providing essential information to enable the use of other maintenance models
such as RCM and in monitoring the efficiency of PM's maintenance
performance.
In conjunction with the implementation of RCM and other maintenance
concepts, WaterCo began to adopt the WLC approach when building new
plants or replacing equipment. A WLC model is established with the assistance
of a software consultancy firm. This model enables the input of factors
concerning asset behaviour from CAMM along with other elements such as
power consumption and depreciation factors to profile asset spending patterns.
Based on this information, WaterCo can choose, theoretically, the lowest WLC
option regardless of individual factors such as initial high capital cost or high
maintenance cost. To supplement the WLC notion, cross-departmental steering
groups have been set up to look into issues such as availability, reliability and
maintainability of the proposed plants, drawing from experiences of existing
plants. Maintenance managers have been involved in these steering group
meetings sharing their field experience with the group. But the positive effect of
these meetings will not be easy to quantify, nor will it be seen for many years.

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244

PM now actively seeks to benchmark its maintenance services against its

external competitors and through the national maintenance benchmarking
process called asset management information service (AMIS) audits sponsored
by Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). A follow-up AMIS benchmark
audit was undertaken at the end of 1998 when PM aimed to increase its score
from 44 per cent to above 55 per cent. The result of the follow-up audit shows
that PM has achieved an overall AMIS score of 59 per cent, which places
WaterCo in the upper quartile of water company AMIS scores. It is a significant
improvement on the 1996 score of 44 per cent, but there is still considerable
scope for improvement within WaterCo for it to match the world class level at
75 per cent. One of its business goals is, among other things, to achieve a top 25
per cent position in the AMIS maintenance effectiveness audit. PM is
undoubtedly ahead of the other three companies in this study in terms of its
strategy of maintenance management and its perceived effectiveness by its
maintenance engineers (see Table III).
SaltCo
The maintenance techniques of SaltCo represent a mixture of break down
service, planned preventive maintenance and condition monitoring practice in a
somewhat fragmented manner. Historically, the maintenance regime has been
predominantly a breakdown service. The reasons for this may be shortage of
staff and the perceived lower cost of breakdown maintenance compared with
preventive maintenance. In the survey for this study, 89 per cent of the
maintenance respondents thought that maintenance techniques used at work
were mostly or often breakdown maintenance, while 74 per cent felt that
preventive maintenance was carried out. According to the engineering
manager, 70 per cent of the maintenance staff's time was spent on breakdowns.
As continuity of supply is a top priority to customers, every vital area of
production is protected by back-up support systems to minimise the risk of
down time. The availability of the standby system in a sense discourages
efforts in increasing the reliability of the equipment through long-term
improvement.
The bulk of planned preventive maintenance takes place during the two twoweek annual shutdowns when the demand for the salt products is relatively
lower. The shutdown schedules are extremely well-crafted and specific because
``there is so much going on in such a short period of time''. But they are only
concerned with the part of the equipment that cannot normally be accessed
without shutting the plant down such as inside the evaporators. Planning
appears to be much less efficient for all non-shutdown activities. Condition
monitoring techniques are only used on the critical equipment for which there
is no standby system and which they cannot afford to lose, for example, the
turbine.
A maintenance audit was conducted by a maintenance consultancy firm in
1998. According to the audit report, SaltCo was considered to be at its strongest
in strategy and policy, employee involvement and its maintenance regime.

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Maintenance and business objectives were closely aligned. It was less strong in
the management of workload and materials and in measures of performance.
The report has put forward a number of suggestions for improvement in
different areas concerning the management of maintenance work such as a
computerised maintenance management system (CMMS) to record the
maintenance activities. SaltCo has taken up much of the advice and changes
have been on the way in the last two years, such as introducing the CMMS. The
objective of the CMMS was to facilitate the management of the maintenance
resource, to monitor maintenance efficiency, and to provide appropriately
analysed management information for further consideration.
The pitfall of the current maintenance regime is well recognised by SaltCo
but limited work has been done to reverse the situation. As a result of this mode
of operation, the maintenance engineers tend to work in a fire-fighting style to
tackle breakdowns, and they are very experienced in doing so. What is lacking
in the maintenance regime is to develop a far more rigorous maintenance
strategy to look into improving the long-term reliability of the equipment by
reducing the level of breakdowns in the first place. The challenge for the senior
management team is to move away from a mainly breakdown oriented
maintenance regime which ``has been appropriate for SaltCo in the past'' (the
operations director) to one with a greater emphasis on predictive and
preventive methods. This represents a marked cultural shift and a significant
change process.
GlassUK
The maintenance philosophy adopted by GlassUK is mainly that of preventive
maintenance and breakdown services. Most of the critical parts on the
production lines have been duplicated. The resulting workload is then
managed and prioritised on a very informal basis. There is no written
procedure to show how work requests of all types are to be dealt with. The
workload profile is not accurately known. According to the AMIS audit
conducted in November 1995, about 32 per cent of the working hours were
spent on plant maintenance work; 41 per cent of working hours on repairs/
improvements/requests; 12 per cent of working hours on emergency work; and
15 per cent of working hours on ``project'' work. It was recognised that there
was a backlog of work but the size was unknown because it was not measured
or reported (the audit team estimated it as one man year). Management
accepted that the percentage of planned maintenance work was too low and the
level of unplanned work was too high. This finding is supported by the result
of the survey for this study, which was conducted three years after the audit.
A major complaint from the craftsmen captured in the survey and in the
interviews was that the ongoing reduction of workforce over the last few years
had left the maintenance people with too much work and too little manpower to
cope. As a result, the frequency of planned preventative maintenance is cut and
the level of breakdowns was increasing. The predominant maintenance
technique was breakdown services. In the survey for this study, 80 per cent of

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the craftsmen felt that ``breakdown maintenance'' was the ``mostly'' or ``often''
used maintenance technique on site, while 53 per cent thought that ``preventive
maintenance'' was used ``sometimes''. Another 53 per cent of people thought
that RCM was in use. When asked in the survey if they considered that the
maintenance techniques currently deployed on site were appropriate, 40 per
cent of the maintenance craftsmen felt ``not sure'' and another 40 per cent chose
``no''. A common statement was that they could see the deterioration of the plant
that would result in higher costs for the company in the future.
The AMIS report further pointed out that accountability of maintenance
strategy was not clear at works level. There was no formal betterment policy
with improvement targets. Some job history data were logged but mean time
between failures and cost of failure are not determined. Although line yield is
carefully monitored and reduced yield due to engineering downtime is
calculated, no other performance measurements are used in maintenance
management. Craftsmen's hours are not allocated to jobs. The real cost of
maintenance and how it is related to type of job, type of asset or cause is
unknown. Indeed, very low scores were achieved on two of the AMIS
assessment criteria ``Workload planning and control'' and ``Cost management''
(20 per cent and 14 per cent respectively), which have dragged the overall
average score down significantly.
Nevertheless, this ``lack of planning'' does not mean that shopfloor activities
are unorganised but is more of a problem of ``lack of documentation'' of what is
going on. Most of the maintenance activities are ``planned'' in the mind by the
maintenance supervisors and the maintenance craftsmen based on years of site
experience. As a matter of fact, there was a vigorous challenge from the
maintenance team at the time of the audit as to whether the AMIS audit was to
be the only measure of world class. Most of the maintenance people have been
working on this site for over ten years. They see themselves as a highly
committed team. The craftsmen's commitment to the wellbeing of the plant
was also reflected in their strong criticism of the inadequacy of the current
maintenance approach. According to the AMIS audit, there was an excellent
level of dialogue and generally the team members were in accord as to what
needs to be done. The assets were reasonably well maintained but there was
scope for cost reduction and improvement. The issues highlighted in the AMIS
report have provided a very useful guideline for the management in
implementing changes such as the introduction of a CMMS.
PrintersLtd
The maintenance approach of PrintersLtd is predominantly preventative
maintenance plus a large quantity of breakdown service due to continuous
production and the ageing profile of the equipment. Job sheets and routine
maintenance schedules are produced to be followed. An IT system is used to
record all maintenance activities daily by the supervisors. The performance of
equipment can be monitored by the maintenance engineers on the computer
screens in real time. Although most of the maintenance staff and production

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workers interviewed considered that the maintenance function was managed

effectively or as effectively as it could be, given the conditions, only a small
majority (57 per cent) of maintenance surveyees thought that the maintenance
techniques currently used by the company were appropriate. The reason for
that is mainly the lack of designated time for maintenance activities, as the
presses are being used most of the time for production work. As a result,
maintenance work has to be fitted in between gaps of production activities,
quite often one hour here and one hour there. With its clients operating in the
most competitive newspaper market in the world, the highly perishable nature
of the newspaper product and the tight production schedule has forced
PrintersLtd to put production as the first priority.
Compared with SaltCo and GlassUK, PrintersLtd operates in a more planned
and systematic way in terms of its maintenance management (see Table III). It
has a higher level use of IT systems in monitoring maintenance activities.
PrintersLtd is also the only company among the four which would not
contemplate outsourcing plant maintenance as the firm believes that the plant
is its ``bread and butter'' and it cannot afford to wait for contractors to turn up
for repair should there be a breakdown. The other three companies all
outsource a certain amount of their maintenance work to contractors in order to
keep the number of in-house maintenance staff down.
Conclusions and recommendations
This study found that, on the whole, the maintenance functions of all four
companies shared similar characteristics. There was, to a different degree:
.
too little maintenance planning and too much fire-fighting;
.
insufficient use of measurement of maintenance efficiency and long-term
planning;
.
inadequate budgetary control in maintenance;
.
a lack of appreciation of the direct costs of maintenance, e.g. the cost of
the loss of asset availability;
.
a low level of awareness of modern maintenance techniques of the third
generation of maintenance philosophy; and
.
limited connection (if any) between maintenance strategy and business
strategy.
The evidence shows that none of the four companies has adopted the third
generation of the maintenance philosophy in its true sense yet. Preventive
maintenance appears to be the major technique deployed, although a large
proportion of the maintenance activities are breakdown services, especially in
SaltCo and PrintersLtd, as indicated in the survey results. To a greater or lesser
extent, the maintenance staff were driven by the machines rather than driving
the machines. The notion of ``total cost of ownership'' of physical assets from
``womb to tomb'' (Husband, 1986) often gives way to the short-term needs of

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Table IV.
Recommendations for
case study companies

keeping the plant running. As the production pressure increases, there seems to
be a tendency for SaltCo, GlassUK and PrintersLtd to slip back to reactive
maintenance from preventive maintenance. While WaterCo has made its way
towards the third generation by introducing techniques such as RCM and
WLC, the stumbling block of RCM is the many new concepts imbedded in the
process. Many maintenance people are still holding the most basic beliefs on
maintenance. Like their counterparts from the other three companies, they are
unfamiliar with these new ideas, let alone being ready to implement a
fundamental change in the maintenance strategy. Much hard training will be
needed for large numbers of people to acquire the relevant skills if RCM is to
make a successful start.
It appears that none of the four companies investigated placed their
maintenance function in a sufficiently important position in relation to their
business and production strategies. In other words, maintenance function
remains a low priority. Although all of them try their best to maximise the
efficiency and effectiveness of their maintenance activities within the
constrained resources, they do not seem to be strategic enough, with the
exception of WaterCo. Three out of four firms have had a maintenance audit
carried out by external consultancy firms. This is a strong indication of their
desire to improve maintenance performance and benchmarking performance
Companies

Recommendations

WaterCo

Implement the long-term maintenance strategy in a whole-hearted way and as

part of the business strategy
Move away from the fire-fighting culture
Relax the 100 per cent PPM target in order to make room for maintenance
activities that have greater long-term benefits
Increase maintenance managers' and craftsmen's understanding of the third
generation maintenance techniques

SaltCo

Greater use of cost and benefit analysis on different assets to work out the
best long-term maintenance strategy for each
Increase the number of maintenance craftsmen to a sufficient level
Move away from the fire-fighting culture to be more proactive
Increase maintenance managers' and craftsmen's understanding of the third
generation maintenance techniques and their appropriateness for the plant

GlassUK

Formulate a maintenance strategy as part of the operations strategy

Calculate the workload more precisely (including backlog) and cost the
maintenance activities
Increase the number of maintenance craftsmen to a sufficient level
Move away from the fire-fighting culture
Increase maintenance managers' and craftsmen's understanding of the third
generation maintenance techniques

PrintersLtd

Designate more time for daily maintenance activities

Increase the involvement of maintenance craftsmen in plant improvement
Increase maintenance managers' and craftsmen's understanding of the third
generation maintenance techniques and their suitability for the plant

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with the rest of the world. But some companies, for example, WaterCo, have
responded to the audit better than others. This is largely due to the fact that PM
operates very much as an independent business unit within its corporation and
has been under the threat of being outsourced, whereas other maintenance
departments still remain very much an integral part of the company.
In short, heightened global competition and increasing complexity and cost
of the plant equipment requires a maintenance strategy which can contribute to
the long-term competitiveness (Porter, 1990) of the company with a high level
of availability and reliability (Nakajima, 1988). Yet, limited evidence is found in
this research that the companies studied have such a maintenance strategy in
place, a sign which can be worrying.
Some recommendations for each case study company are summarised here
(see Table IV) which may provide guidance for the improvement of their
maintenance management.
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Husband, T.M. (1986), Maintenance Management and Terotechnology, Gower, Aldershot.
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productivity index'', International Journal of Production Economics, No. 63, pp. 47-58.
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