Maintenance

Maintenance
Maintenance may be defined as the chronological activities or as the process of systematic
activities done for keeping the machine or equipment at the top level for well run or its proper
services.

Maintenance is a set of organized activities that are carried out in order to keep an item in its
best operational condition with minimum cost acquired.

British Standard Glossary of terms (3811:1993) defined maintenance as: The combination of
all technical and administrative actions, including supervision actions, intended to retain an
item in, or restore it to, a state in which it can perform a required function.

Activities of maintenance function could be either repair or replacement activities, which are
necessary for an item to reach its acceptable productivity condition or these activities, should
be carried out with a minimum possible cost.

History
For most of our industrial history, maintenance was simple. When it broke, you fixed it.
Maintenance was purely reactive. This is called corrective maintenance or, for more drastic
failures, sometimes emergency maintenance. For most pre-industrial management, this was
fine. If something broke, then the customer just had to wait longer for its product. Very few
businesses had anything even remotely similar to what we see as maintenance nowadays. One
of the few exceptions was the Montgolfier paper mills, which started to employ regular
maintenance, including cleaning of the tools, around 1800. They used thirty-five days per
year for maintenance. The family is more famous, however, for inventing the hot air balloon.

With the Industrial Revolution, maintenance became more prominent. The problem was that
boilers of steam engines tended to explode, maiming or killing the workers nearby. This led
to technical checks and verifications to ensure that the boiler was in a safe working condition.
The German TÜV (Technical Inspection Association) was also established after a large boiler
explosion in 1865. The goal was to prevent loss of life through maintenance. But as long as
they didn’t kill anybody, machines were usually fixed only after they broke.

As manufacturing became more and more connected, supply chains more complicated, and
product varieties increased, breakdowns of machines led to many (and expensive) follow-up
problems. The idea to fix machines before they broke appeared, and preventive maintenance
(PM) (or planned maintenance) was born. Henry Ford used it extensively in his factories and
also recommended it for his car. For example, the Ford Model T manual from 1919 advises,
frequently inspect the running gear. See that no unnecessary play exists in either front or rear
wheels and that all bolts and nuts are tight. Make a practice of taking care of every repair or
adjustment as soon as its necessity is discovered. This attention requires but little time and
may avoid delay or possible accident on the road.

The challenge here is that there are numerous possible failures. It may be impossible, or at
least financially insensible, to prevent them all. It would be better to prevent only the
problems that are likely to happen, but then you would need to know which problems are
likely to happen. The question of what to maintain, how to maintain, how often to maintain,
which spare parts to stock, and so on still challenges maintenance to this day.

War is the driver of many inventions, and maintenance of aircraft and other gear during
World War II became more prominent. In the years after World War II, a whole flurry of
terms related to maintenance appeared. Corrective Maintenance appeared in 1957,
maintenance prevention (not to be confused with preventive maintenance) appeared in 1959,
and productive maintenance appeared in 1961. In the US airline industry, reliability centered
maintenance (RCM) was also developed, but is less known nowadays. The overarching term
proactive maintenance is also sometimes used. There are some minor differences between the
meanings of these terms, but to me they all feel the same, and the difference may be more of
a way to sell consulting to clients rather than differences in actual maintenance.

The idea of productive maintenance reached Japan after World War II. At this time, a lot of
industrial ideas from the US fell on fertile ground in Japan, like Training within Industry, or
Deming’s quality circles, and were improved upon. Productive maintenance, too, turned into
total productive maintenance (TPM) in 1969. The key driver behind this development was
Seichi Nakajima, who learned about productive maintenance in the USA and in Europe. He
developed TPM together with the Japan Institute for Plant Maintenance (JIPM). The motto is
“Protect your machine and take care of it with your own hands.” The same acronym is also
sometimes written as total preventive maintenance, but this seems to be not a different set of
tools but merely a confusion of the many different terms.

At the same time, maintenance for most companies was still mostly reactive and not very
organized. Only between 1960 and 1980 did maintenance become more prominent and
structured. Around this time, norms for maintenance were established, together with the sale
of certificates.
 Figure: Maintenance History (Adapted From Shenoy, Bhadury 1998)

1. In the period of pre-World War II, people thought of maintenance as an added cost
to the plant which did not increase the value of finished product.
Therefore, the maintenance at that era was restricted to fixing the unit when it breaks
because it was the cheapest alternative.

2. During and after World War II at the time when the advances of engineering and
scientific technology developed, people developed other types of maintenance, which
were much cheaper such as preventive maintenance.
In addition, people in this era classified maintenance as a function of the production
system.

3. Nowadays, increased awareness of such issues as environment safety, quality of

product and services makes maintenance one of the most important functions that
contribute to the success of the industry.
World-class companies are in continuous need of a very well organized maintenance
program to compete world-wide.