 Maintenance

All actions appropriate for retaining an item/part/equipment in, or restoring it to,

a given condition.

 Maintenance Engineering

It is the discipline and profession of applying engineering concepts to the optimization of equipment,
procedures, and departmental budgets to achieve better maintainability, reliability, and availability of
equipment.

 Types

Preventive maintenance: All actions carried out on a planned, periodic, and specific schedule to keep
an item/equipment in stated working condition through the process of checking and reconditioning.

Corrective maintenance: The unscheduled maintenance or repair to return items/equipment to a

defined state.

Predictive maintenance: The use of modern measurement and signal processing

methods to accurately diagnose item/equipment condition during operation.

 Maintenance management

It may be described as the function of providing policy guidance for maintenance activities, in addition
to exercising technical and management control of maintenance programs

 Lubrication

It is the process, or technique employed to reduce wear of one or both surfaces in close proximity, and
moving relative to each other, by interposing a substance called lubricant, between the surfaces to
carry or to help carry the load between the opposing surfaces.

 Refrigeration

The process of removing heat from an enclosed space or from a substance for the purpose of lowering
the temperature.

 Air conditioning

The process of altering the properties

of air (primarily temperature and humidity) to more favorable conditions.

Air conditioning can refer to any form of technological cooling, heating, ventilation, or disinfection that
modifies the condition of air.

 Machine erection

The process of manufacturing, transporting and installing of a machine.

 Machine foundation
The base on which any machine is founded or installed.

 Calibration

It is a comparison between measurements – one of known magnitude or correctness made or set with
one device and another measurement made in as similar a way as possible with a second device.

The device with the known or assigned correctness is called the standard. The second device is the unit
under test, test instrument, or any of several other names for the device being calibrated.

 Accident

An unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage
or injury.

 Safety

Safety can defined to be the control of recognized hazards to achieve an acceptable level of risk.

Safety measures are activities and precautions taken to improve safety.

 Active repair time:

The component of downtime when repair persons are active to effect a repair.

 Mean time to repair (MTTR):

A figure of merit depending on item maintainability equal to the mean item repair time. In the case of
exponentially distributed times to repair, MTTR is the reciprocal of the repair rate.

 Overhaul:

A comprehensive inspection and restoration of an item or a piece of equipment to an acceptable level

at a durability time or usage limit.

 Quality:

The degree to which an item, function, or process satisfies requirements of customer and user.

 Maintenance person:

An individual who conducts preventive maintenance and responds to a user’s service call to a repair
facility, and performs corrective maintenance on an item. Also called custom engineer, service person,
technician, field engineer, mechanic, repair person, etc.

 Inspection:

The qualitative observation of an item’s performance or condition.

 Main objectives of PM

 To enhance capital equipment productive life.

 To reduce critical equipment breakdowns.

  To allow better planning and scheduling of needed maintenance work.

 To minimize production losses due to equipment failures.

 To promote health and safety of maintenance personnel.

Seven elements of PM

Six steps for establishing a highly effective PM program in a short period

 PM Advantages

♦ increase in equipment availability,

♦ performed as convenient,

♦ balanced workload,

♦ reduction in overtime,

♦ increase in production revenue,

♦ consistency in quality,

♦ reduction in need for standby equipment,

♦ stimulation in pre-action instead of reaction,

♦ reduction in parts inventory,

♦ improved safety,

♦ standardized procedures, times, and costs,

♦ scheduled resources on hand,

♦ useful in promoting benefit/cost optimization.

♦ Disadvantages of PM

♦ exposing equipment to possible damage,

♦ using a greater number of parts,

♦ increases in initial costs,

♦ failures in new parts/components,

♦ demands more frequent access to equipment/item.

♦ Five major categories

  Corrective maintenance is composed of five major sequential steps

 Reactive maintenance

This type of maintenance is also known as breakdown, fix-when-fail, run-to-failure, or repair

maintenance. When using this maintenance approach, equipment repair, maintenance, or replacement
takes place only when deterioration in the condition of an item/equipment results in a functional
failure.

--- When reactive maintenance is practiced solely,

 a high replacement of part inventories,

 poor use of maintenance effort, and

 high percentage of unplanned maintenance activities are typical.

 Predictive testing and inspection

Predictive testing and inspections (PTI) is sometimes called condition monitoring or predictive
maintenance. To assess item/equipment condition, it uses performance data, nonintrusive testing
techniques, and visual inspection. PTI replaces arbitrarily timed maintenance tasks with maintenance
that is performed as warranted by the item/equipment condition. Analysis of item/equipment
condition-monitoring data on a continuous basis is useful for planning and scheduling
maintenance/repair in advance of catastrophic or functional failure.
  Proactive maintenance

This type of maintenance helps improve maintenance through actions such as better design,
workmanship, installation, scheduling, and maintenance procedures. The characteristics of proactive
maintenance include practicing a continuous process of improvement, using feedback and
communications to ensure that changes in design/procedures are efficiently made available to item
designers/management, ensuring that nothing affecting maintenance occurs in total isolation, with the
ultimate goal of correcting the concerned equipment forever, optimizing and tailoring maintenance
methods and technologies to each application.

 Maintenance management may be described as the function of providing policy guidance for
maintenance activities, in addition to exercising technical and management control of
maintenance programs.

The management and control of maintenance activities are equally important to performing
maintenance.

 Maintenance department functions

 Planning and repairing equipment/facilities to acceptable standards

 Performing preventive maintenance

 Preparing realistic budgets

 Managing inventory to ensure that parts/materials necessary to conduct maintenance tasks are
readily available

 Keeping records on equipment, services, etc.

 Developing effective approaches to monitor the activities of maintenance staff

 Developing effective techniques for keeping operations personnel, upper-level management,

and other concerned groups aware of maintenance activities

 Training maintenance staff and other concerned individuals to improve their skills and perform
effectively

 Reviewing plans for new facilities, installation of new equipment, etc.

 Implementing methods to improve workplace safety and developing safety education-related

programs for maintenance staff

 Developing contract specifications and inspecting work performed by contractors to ensure

compliance with contractual requirements

 Centralized maintenance serves well in small- and medium-sized enterprises housed in one
structure, or service buildings located in an immediate geographic area.

 Benefits:

 More efficient compared to decentralized maintenance.

  Fewer maintenance personnel required.

 More effective line supervision.

 Drawbacks:

 Requires more time getting to and from the work area or job.

 More difficult supervision because of remoteness of maintenance site from the

centralized headquarters.

 Higher transportation cost due to remote maintenance work.

 In the case of decentralized maintenance, a maintenance group is assigned to a particular area

or unit.

 Benefits:

 To reduce travel time to and from maintenance jobs,

 A spirit of cooperation between production and maintenance workers,

 Usually closer supervision, and higher chances for maintenance personnel to become
familiar with sophisticated equipment or facilities.

 Experience indicates that in large plants a combination of centralized and decentralized

maintenance normally works best.

 A nine-step approach for managing a maintenance program effectively

1. Identify existing deficiencies. This can be accomplished through interviews with maintenance
personnel and by examining in-house performance indicators.

2. Set maintenance goals. These goals take into consideration existing deficiencies and identify
targets for improvement.

3. Establish priorities. List maintenance projects in order of savings or merit.

4. Establish performance measurement parameters. Develop a quantifiable measurement for

each set goal, for example, number of jobs completed per week and percentage of cost on
repair.

5. Establish short- and long-range plans. The short-range plan focuses on high-priority goals,
usually within a one-year period. The long-range plan is more strategic in nature and identifies
important goals to be reached within three to five years.

6. Document both long- and short-range plans and forward copies to all concerned individuals.

7. Implement plan.

8. Report status. Preparing a brief report periodically, say semi-annually, and forward it to all
involved individuals. The report contains for each objective identified in the short- range plan
information on actual or potential slippage of the schedule and associated causes.
9. Examine progress annually. Review progress at the end of each year with respect to stated
goals. Develop a new short-range plan for the following year by considering the goals identified
in the long-range plan and adjustments made to the previous year’s planned schedule,
resources, costs, and so on.