Engineering Maintenance

A Modern Approach

B.S. Dhillon

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781000687323
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Industrial Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Of the more than $300 billion spent on plant maintenance and operations, U.S. industry spends as much as 80 percent of this amount to correct chronic failures of machines, systems, and people. With machines and systems becoming increasingly complex, this problem can only worsen, and there is a clear and pressing need to establish comprehensive equi

1 Introduction

BACKGROUND

Since the Industrial Revolution, maintenance of engineering equipment in the field has been a challenge. Although impressive progress has been made in maintaining equipment in the field in an effective manner, maintenance of equipment is still a challenge due to factors such as size, cost, complexity, and competition. Needless to say, today’s maintenance practices are market driven, in particular for the manufacturing and process industry, service suppliers, and so on.¹ An event may present an immediate environmental, performance, or safety implication. Thus, there is a definite need for effective asset management and maintenance practices that will positively influence critical success factors such as safety, product quality, speed of innovation, price, profitability, and reliable delivery.

Each year billions of dollars are spent on equipment maintenance around the world. Over the years, many new developments have taken place in this area. The terms “maintenance” and “maintenance engineering” may mean different things to different people. For example, the U.S. Department of Defense sees maintenance engineering as a discipline that assists in acquisition of resources needed for maintenance, and provides policies and plans for the use of resources in performing or accomplishing maintenance.² In contrast, maintenance activities are viewed as those that use resources in physically performing those actions and tasks attendant on the equipment maintenance function for test, servicing, repair, calibration, overhaul, modification, and so on.

Comprehensive lists of publications on maintenance and maintenance engineering are given in References 3 and 4.

MAINTENANCE AND MAINTENANCE ENGINEERING OBJECTIVES

Even though maintenance engineering and maintenance have the same end objective or goal (i.e., mission-ready equipment/item at minimum cost), the environments under which they operate differ significantly. More specifically, maintenance engineering is an analytical function as well as it is deliberate and methodical. In contrast, maintenance is a function that must be performed under normally adverse circumstances and stress, and its main objective is to rapidly restore the equipment to its operational readiness state using available resources. Nonetheless, the contributing objectives of maintenance engineering include: improve maintenance operations, reduce the amount and frequency of maintenance, reduce the effect of complexity, reduce the maintenance skills required, reduce the amount of supply support, establish optimum frequency and extent of preventive maintenance to be carried out, improve and ensure maximum utilization of maintenance facilities, and improve the maintenance organization.²

This book directly or indirectly covers both maintenance and maintenance engineering and their objectives.

MAINTENANCE FACTS AND FIGURES

Some the important facts and figures directly or indirectly associated with engineering maintenance are as follows:

• Each year over $300 billion are spent on plant maintenance and operations by U.S. industry, and it is estimated that approximately 80% of this is spent to correct the chronic failure of machines, systems, and people.⁵

• In 1970, a British Ministry of Technology Working Party report estimated that maintenance cost the United Kingdom (UK) was approximately £3000 million annually.^6,7

• Annually, the cost of maintaining a military jet aircraft is around $1.6 million; approximately 11% of the total operating cost for an aircraft is spent on maintenance activities.⁸

• The typical size of a plant maintenance group in a manufacturing organization varied from 5 to 10% of the total operating force: in 1969, 1 to 17 persons, and in 1981, 1 to 12 persons.⁹

• The U.S. Department of Defense is the steward of the world’s largest dedicated infrastructure, with a physical plant valued at approximately $570 billion on approximately 42,000 square miles of land, i.e., roughly the size of the state of Virginia.¹⁰

• The operation and maintenance budget request of the U.S. Department of Defense for fiscal year 1997 was on the order of $79 billion.¹¹

• Annually, the U.S. Department of Defense spends around $12 billion for depot maintenance of weapon systems and equipment: Navy (59%), Air Force (27%), Army (13%), and others (1%).¹⁰

• In 1968, it was estimated that better maintenance practices in the U.K. could have saved approximately £300 million annually of lost production due to equipment unavailability.¹²

ENGINEERING MAINTENANCE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Due to various factors, it was established in the previous century that “maintenance” must be an integral part of the production strategy for the overall success of an organization. For the effectiveness of the maintenance activity, the 21st century must build on this.¹³

It is expected that equipment of this century will be more computerized and reliable, in addition to being vastly more complex. Further computerization of equipment will significantly increase the importance of software maintenance, approaching, if not equal to, hardware maintenance. This century will also see more emphasis on maintenance with respect to such areas as the human factor, quality, safety, and cost effectiveness.

New thinking and new strategies will be required to realize potential benefits and turn them into profitability. All in all, profitable operations will be the ones that have employed modern thinking to evolve an equipment management strategy that takes effective advantage of new information, technology, and methods.

MAINTENANCE TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

This section presents some terms and definitions directly or indirectly used in engineering maintenance:^{2,14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19}

• Maintenance: All actions appropriate for retaining an item/part/equipment in, or restoring it to, a given condition.

• Maintenance engineering: The activity of equipment/item maintenance that develops concepts, criteria, and technical requirements in conceptional and acquisition phases to be used and maintained in a current status during the operating phase to assure effective maintenance support of equipment.¹⁴

• 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. These actions are precautionary steps undertaken to forestall or lower the probability of failures ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Maintenance Mathematics
• Chapter 3: Maintenance Management and Control
• Chapter 4: Preventive Maintenance
• Chapter 5: Corrective Maintenance
• Chapter 6: Reliability Centered Maintenance
• Chapter 7: Inventory Control in Maintenance
• Chapter 8: Human Error in Maintenance
• Chapter 9: Quality and Safety in Maintenance
• Chapter 10: Maintenance Costing
• Chapter 11: Software Maintenance
• Chapter 12: Reliability
• Chapter 13: Maintainability
• Index