UNIT – I 07 hours

Principles and practices of maintenance planning

Basic Principles of maintenance planning – Objectives and principles of planned maintenance activity –
Importance and benefits of sound Maintenance systems – Reliability and machine availability – MTBF, MTTR and
MWT – Factors of availability – Maintenance organization

1.1. Maintenance Engineering

1.1.1. Introduction
• Maintenance Engineering is the discipline and profession of applying engineering
concepts to the optimization of equipment, procedures, and departmental budgets to
achieve better
• Maintenance engineering is the occupation that uses engineering theories and practices to
plan maintainability, reliability, and availability of equipment.
• This must be done in conjunction with optimizing operating procedures and budgets to
attain and implement routine maintenance of equipment and machinery.
• Maintenance engineers are often required to have knowledge of many types of equipment
and sustain the highest levels of reliability and profit.
• A person working in the field of maintenance engineering must have in-depth knowledge
of or machinery.
• Experience in the operation and maintenance of machinery specific to a company's
particular business is also frequently required
• Since the position normally requires oral and written communications with various levels
of personnel, excellent interpersonal communication and participatory management skills
are also desirable.
• Maintenance engineering positions require planning and implementing routine and
preventive maintenance programs.
• In addition, regular monitoring of equipment is required to visually detect faults and
impending equipment or production failures before they occur.
• These positions may also require observing and overseeing repairs and maintenance
performed by outside vendors and contractors.
• In a production or manufacturing environment, good maintenance engineering is
necessary for smooth and safe daily plant operations.
• Maintenance engineers not only monitor the existing systems and equipment, they also
recommend improved systems and help decide when systems are outdated and in need of
replacement.
• Such a position often involves exchanging ideas and information with other
maintenance• engineers, production managers, and manufacturing systems engineers.
• Maintenance engineering not only requires engineers to monitor large production
machine operations and heavy duty equipment, but also often requires involvement with
computer operations
• Maintenance engineers may have to deal with everything from PCs, routers, servers, and
software to more complex issues like local and off-site networks, configuration systems,
end user support, and scheduled upgrades. Supervision of technical personnel may also
be required.

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 • Good maintenance engineering is vital to the success of any manufacturing or processing
operation, regardless of size
• The maintenance engineer is responsible for the efficiency of daily operations and for
discovering and solving any operational problems in the plant
• A company's success may depend on a quality maintenance engineering department that
can be depended upon to discover systematic flaws and recommend solid, practical
solutions.

Definition of Maintenance
Maintenance is the routine and recurring process of keeping a particular machine or asset in its
normal operating conditions, so that it can deliver the expected performance or service without
any loss or damage.

Maintenance is defined as
All actions necessary for retaining an item, or restoring to it, a serviceable condition, include
• servicing, repair, modification, overhaul, inspection and condition verification
• Increase availability of a system
• Keep system’s equipment in working order

Purpose of Maintenance
• Attempt to maximize performance of production equipment efficiently and regularly
• Increase reliability of the operating systems
• Minimize production loss from failures
• Prevent breakdown or failures

Principle Objectives in Maintenance

• To achieve product quality and customer satisfaction through adjusted and serviced
equipment and customer satisfaction through adjusted and serviced equipment
• Maximize useful life of equipment
• Keep equipment safe and prevent safety hazards
• Minimize frequency and severity of interruptions
• Maximize production capacity – through high utilization of facility

Objectives of Maintenance Engineering

• The most important objective of the maintenance is the maximization of
• availability of equipments and facilities so as to help in achieving the ultimate
goals of the organisation.
The following are the objectives of planned maintenance activity:
• To achieve minimum breakdown and to keep the plant in good working condition
at the lowest possible cost.
• To ensure the availability of the machines and services in an optimum working
condition.
• To keep the machines and other facilities in a condition to be used to achieve the
maximum profit without any interruption or hindrance.

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 • To keep the time schedule of delivery to the customers or to the sections for
further processing.
• To meet the availability requirements for critical equipments.
• To keep the maintenance costs as low as possible for non critical equipments.
• To control the cost of maintenance related activities
• To provide effective and trained supervision.
• To meet the quality requirements of the product.
• To increase the profits of production systems.

What are the principles of maintenance?

a) Plant management in maintenance work:
The main role of a maintenance function is to provide safe and effective operation of the
equipment to achieve the desired targets on time with economics usage of resources.
b) Production and maintenance objectives: The plant operation is driven by the
production targets.The objective of maintenance function is to support this target. The
achievement of desired goalsof a production system is to be supported by both the
production and maintenance department toe nsure smooth and successful operation of the
industry.
c) Establishment of work order and recording system: The maintenance system should
have proper work and recording system. The work order for the maintenance function
indicates the Nature of work to be performed and the series of operations to be followed
to execute a particular job. It is necessary to maintain proper records and entries to
monitor the maintenance function.
d) Information based decision making: The maintenance objectives are successfully
achieved by the use of reliable information system. This information is used to meet the
manpower and spare parts re4quirements of the industry.
e) Adherence to planned maintenance strategy:A sound maintenance management
should adhere to the planned maintenance stratergy. This also includes the use of
manufacturer information on the life and maintenance schedules of the equipment and
other material resources available.
f) Planning of maintenance function: All the maintenance function is to be carefully
executed by a way of proper planning to ensure the effective utilization of manpower and
materials.
g) Manpower for maintenance: The manpower requirement of the maintenance system
must be carefully evaluated based on the time and motion study. The requirements should
also satisfy the need arising in case of overhauls, component replacement, emergency and
unscheduled repair.
h) Work force control: Determination of exact work force required to meet the
maintenance objectives of the system is difficulty task due to the element of uncertainty.
Hence the proper control and monitoring of workforce are needs to be ensured
i) Role of spare parts:A good maintenance management system requires appropriate tools.
So the system should have good quality tools and that too available in required quantities
to ensure the proper function of the maintenance work.
j) Training of maintenance work force: Training of the workforce must be integral part of
any good maintenance management system. Training helps the workforce to learn about

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 the modern techniques, recent trends in maintenance and to chalk out a strategy to meet
the growing demands of the industry.

What are important factors considered in maintenance planning?

a. Job description:
The first and foremost task in maintenance planning is the distribution of the jobs to the
personnel for preventive and emergency maintenance works. It is the practice to form two
separate task groups to tackle the both. If not possible a same group can also be used to tackle
both the situations in such way that during scheduling, time must be devoted for unforeseen
breakdowns or situations in maintenance.
b. Programmed:
The development of maintenance programs involves
selection of activities for maintenance
determination of the frequency of preventive maintenance
decision on the cost effective methodology Selection of activities
This selection is based on cost involved between preventive and breakdown maintenance.
c. Manpower allocation:
The manpower allocation is the most important task of the maintenance management group. It
provides adequate manpower to execute various jobs in the system. This should also take into
consideration the skill level of personal deputed for the maintenance tasks. The central idea of
Manpower allocation can be drafted using the information available from maintenance records
and planning the task to meet the objectives of the organization.
d. Staffing:
Staffing is the task of providing the required manpower for the maintenance function. This has to
be achieved at optimum cost. Staffing is depending upon the ability of the organization to tackle
the regular as well as attending the unforeseen situations. Staffing should be sufficient to handle
preventive and emergency maintenance task.
e. Planning technique:
The planning methods are Gantt charts, Milestone method, Critical path method and program
evaluation review. Evolutionary computation based techniques are recently used for maintenance
planning and scheduling.
f. Planning procedure:
Planning procedure involves four step processes. Organizing maintenance resources to ensure
their effectiveuse in future Scheduling the resources for the planned period Execution of plans
according to the schedules Establishing a feedback system for all the above processes to know
the deficiencies of each of the processes.
g. Estimation of maintenance work:
Estimation is used to find out the quantity and quality of the maintenance work. This will help in
allocation of the required manpower. The following methods are used for the estimation of
maintenance wok. Measurement by estimates, historical data and by conventional standard time
data.
h. Maintenance control:
Maintenance control is the auditing techniques to ensure the effective utilization of the
maintenance budget. This involves the integration of accountability with in the system. Rope
accounting of maintenance work should be carried out at every level of the maintenance
organization.

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MAINTENANCE FUNCTIONS AND ACTIVITIES
• Identifying areas for implementation of preventive maintenance program
• Making suitable arrangements for maintenance facilities for carrying out the maintenance
work properly
• Planning and scheduling the total maintenance work
• Ensuring proper and timely supply of spare parts
• Managing proper inventory control of materials spares an tools required for the
• maintenance
• standardization of maintenance work
• Impleting modifications to the existing wherever possible
• Assisting the purchase department in procuring materials Disbursement of services such
as water, electricity, steam, compressed air and other amenities required to carry out the
maintenance
• Identification of obsolete and surplus equipment for replacement and disposal
• Designing the systematic way for disposal of equipment an for maintaining floor space
• Training of maintenance personnel
• Analysis of future demands and forecast the role of maintenance activities
• Implementation safety norms and procedures
• Ensuring safety of personnel and equipment

TYPES OF MAINTENANCE ORGANIZATION

The selection of a type of maintenance system will largely depend on the structure of an
industry. Maintenance organization can be broadly classified into three types as follows:

Decentralized
This is suitable for large sized plants where inter unit communication is difficult to get. In
this type of organization, the maintenance is under the control of chief engineer of
production to ensure better understanding between the production and maintenance
department.

Centralized
This is suitable for small units where unit communication is feasible. In this type of
organization, the maintenance is under control of chief maintenance engineer. The
responsibilities and accountability is with the concerned department heads.

Partially Centralized
This is the modified version of centralized maintenance organization and suitable for the
industry where units are located at far away locations. In this type of organization, the
maintenance personal attached with production unit will carry out the routine
maintenance works. Scheduled maintenance works such as overhauls, planned
maintenance work, procurement of spare parts are under the control of chief maintenance
engineer at the central office.

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TYPES OF ORGANIZATION:
There are basically two at least two types of organization are followed in most of the industries.
They are
• Line Organization
• Line staff Organization

LINE ORGANISATION
Line organization consists of a general foreman and a number of specialist foremen with their
team under them as shown in figure. The specialist foremen execute maintenance work in their
respective areas while the general foreman supervises the total work under his control and
coordinates the various maintenance tasks carried out in the industry,. This kind of structure is an
old type maintenance organization.

LINE STAFF ORGANIZATION

A few more staff members such as storekeeper and clerk are added to the line organization to
form the line staff organization structure as shown in figure below.
The advantages lies in separating the maintenance work from the storekeeping and the role of
clerk is to record the maintenance activities. The recording of maintenance related activates helps
the organization to restructure the strategies adopted to achieve the objectives of maintenance.

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MAINTENANCE FUNCTIONAL ORGANIZATION
Maintenance functional organization is the structure based on craft concept. In this organization
structure persons joined the organization as apprentices and elevated to higher positions such as
foreman after sufficient experience in their respective jobs. This organization structure is based
on the craft skills acquired through experience. There is no formal training mechanism available
at each stage of the organization. The recent trends in maintenance management also favors this
kind of functional based organization based on craft skills. Figure below shows the maintenance
functional organization in which few workers are placed under each functional foreman.

CENTRALLY CONTROLLED MAINTENANCE ORGANIZATION

Centrally controlled maintenance organization as shown in figure below, is adopted in which all
major types of maintenance work are undertaken by the central workshop. The limitation of this
kind maintenance is that it is possible only for equipment which can be shifted to workshop.

AREA MAINTENANCE ORGANIZATION

Area maintenance organization provides better utility of manpower when the units are located at
various locations. For example mining industry, area maintenance manager takes care of
maintenance for a particular area and is equipped with number of workers to carry out
maintenance work including emergency works as shown in figure below. In case of major /
important maintenance works. This team will coordinate with central workshop.

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 MAINTENANCE ECONOMICS

LIFE CYCLE COST ANALYSIS

Life cycle costing is the cost analysis for the equipment in an industry that accounts the total cost
of the equipment over a span of time which includes the capital cost, operating cost and
Maintenance costs.

Life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) is a tool to determine the most cost-effective option among different
competing alternatives to purchase, own, operate, maintain and, finally, dispose of an object or process,
when each is equally appropriate to be implemented on technical grounds.

For example, for a highway pavement, in addition to the initial construction cost, LCCA
takes into account all the user costs, (e.g., reduced capacity at work zones), and agency
costs related to future activities, including future periodic maintenance and rehabilitation.
All the costs are usually discounted and total to a present day value known as net present
value (NPV). This example can be generalized on any type of material, product, or
system.

In order to perform a LCCA scoping is critical - what aspects are to be included and what
not? If the scope becomes too large the tool may become impractical to use and of limited
ability to help in decision-making and consideration of alternatives; if the scope is too
small then the results may be skewed by the choice of factors considered such that the
output becomes unreliable or partisan. Usually the LCCA term implies that energy and

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environmental costs are included, whereas the similar Whole Life Costing generally has a
reduced scope.

The factors to be considered in the purchase of equipment of industries include the cost,
quality, performance and maintenance requirements. Some balance is to be made
between the capital cost and operating cost of the equipment in finding the suitability of
the equipment. The evaluation of any equipment for purchase should be made by keeping
into considerations that total cost incurred by the equipment over a span of time say ten
years. Life cycle costing is the cost analysis for the equipment in an industry that
accounts the total cost of the equipment over a span of time which includes the capital
cost, operating cost and maintenance costs. This analysis is the integration of
engineering, economic and financial strategies in relation to the equipment to be
purchased. The aim of life cycle costing is to ascertain the total cost of equipment over
the span of its entire life period.

Advantages of life cycle costing:

• Integration of engineering, economics and financial aspects lead to the way of
robust metric for the selection and purchase equipment required for the industry.
• Reduced operating and maintenance cost of equipments due to cost analysis over
span of time.
• It leads to the selection of proper and economically viable equipment.

Estimation of economic life of equipment:

The economic life of equipment depends on the maintenance and repair costs, availability
and operational efficiency. A plot of cumulative efficiency and maintenance and repair
cost per cumulative hours Vs operating hours of the equipment to find the economic life
of the equipment. IN the figure, curve H represents the cumulative hours vs operating
hours of the equipment and curve C/H represents the ratio of maintenance for repair cost
to cumulative hours. The interaction point of two curves indicates the economic life of
the equipment.

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Maintenance Cost:
Budgets are allocated for all the activities in planning stage itself which includes the
maintenance cost. The cost of maintenance is difficult to measure due to random nature
of failures.

One universal measurement of maintenance performance, and perhaps the measure that
matters most in the end, is the cost of maintenance. Unfortunately maintenance costs are
often used to compare maintenance performance between companies or between plants
within the same company. Equally unfortunately, there is no standard for measuring
maintenance costs. Each company, usually each plant within a company and often each
department within a plant develop their own definition of "maintenance costs." For this
reason, maintenance cost comparisons should always be accompanied by a clear
definition of what is included and excluded for each plant included in the comparison.

The records on maintenance history may be useful in determining the cost. The analysis
of maintenance cost is helpful in taking a decision regarding replacement of a machine or
any of its components.

Reliability cost and Maintenance cost:

Reliability cost is the business cost of unreliable systems. It little or no maintenance is

performed, the equipment becomes unreliable and they may produce defective parts. In
such case, important orders may be missed or the equipment consumes more energy.
There can also be other costs of unreliable systems such as environmental and
occupational health and safety costs. The net result is poor customer satisfaction and lost
customers.
Budgets are allocated for all activities in planning stage itself which includes the
maintenance cost. The cost of maintenance may differ from one industry to another
industry based on the maintenance function and structure followed. The maintenance cost
includes the cost of spare parts, materials, manpower and expenditure involved on
services such as electricity, water, gas, etc. The maintenance cost also involves cost of
downtime of the equipment. Sometimes, the downtime ost can be much higher than the
actual maintenance cost. In general, for acritical equipment, maintenance cost is normally
high due to the preventive maintenance procedure which is followed for such equipment.
Maintenance costs are the cost of doing maintenance whether it may be reactive or
preventive maintenance.
Figure shows the reliability cost, maintenance cost and total cost curves plotted against
the reliability. If more maintenance is performed or more money is spent on maintenance
such as man power, holding spares etc., better reliability may be obtained.

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 Fig. Reliability Vs Maintenance cost
As the reliability cost decreases maintenance cost increases. And when more money is
spent on increasing the reliability the availability increases and the maintenance costs is
low. However these increase and decrease or disproportionate as visible from the figure
and from the total cost curve (total cost = reliability cost + maintenance cost), optimum
cost can be obtained.

Optimum cost is the tradeoff between the amount spent on equipment to improve
reliability and amount spent on equipment in reduce maintenance cost.

Maintenance Budget:
The need for a maintenance budget arises from the overall budgeting need of corporate
management and involves estimation of the cost of the resources (labour, spares etc.) that
will be needed in the next financial year to meet the expected maintenance workload. The
maintenance life plans and schedule have been laid down to achieve the maintenance
objective (which incorporates the production needs, e.g. operating pattern and
availability) and in turn generates the maintenance workload.

The maintenance budget is used to set aside certain amount of money to meet the
expenditures incurred in achieving the objectives of maintenance. The following are the
types of maintenance budget,

(i) Appropriation Budget

Budget used to allocate money for each activity independently.
(ii) Fixed Budget
Fixed used to allocate money for a specified period of time.
(iii) Variable Budget
Dynamic allocation of expendure based on maintenance requirements and activities.

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FACTORS CONSIDERED FOR EVALUATION OF MAINTENANCE COST
• Cost of maintenance from the recorded data (past experience
• Level and requirements of maintenance
• Cost of spare parts and materials
• Cost of replacement of components and assemblies subjected wear and tear
• Accounting the number of breakdowns with their levels
• Downtimes of the equipment for want of maintenance and repair
• Penalty cost due to the loss of production
• Cost of manpower involved
• Cost of additional manpower requirements for emergency breakdown and maintenance.

The evaluation of maintenance cost should consider the following factors:

• The evaluation of maintenance cost should consider the following factors.
• Cost of maintenance from the recorded data.
• Level and requirements of maintenance.
• Cost of replacement of components and assemblies subjected to wear and tear.
• Accounting the number of break downs with their levels
• Downtime of the equipment for want of maintenance repair.
• Penalty cost due to loss of production.
• Cost of manpower involved.
• Cost of additional manpower requirement for emergency breakdown and
maintenance.

How to reduce Cost of maintenance in an organization?

The minimization of cost of maintenance can be achieved in following ways
• Centralized planning, scheduling and control
• Grouping of specialized workforce
• Effective labour utilization strategies
• Budgetary control and proper check mechanism to implement the cost control
strategies.
• Proper and effective use of contract maintenance system to reduce the overhead
costs on equipment and manpower.
• Purchase of reliable equipment and spares.
• Use of skilled and trained workforce.
• Proper selection of suitable type of spares, materials and lubricating.
• Proper safety education and formulating the safe practice.
• Constant appraisal and education to workforce about the objectives, strategies and
modern techniques adopted in the area of maintenance.

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Advantages of Life Cycle Costing
• Integration of engineering, economics and financial aspects lead to the way of robust
metric for the selection and purchase equipment required for the industry.
• Reduced operating and maintenance cost of equipments due to cost analysis over span of
time.
• It leads to the selection equipment

State the steps necessary to reduce the maintenance cost in an industry.

Maintenance should be one of the key strategies to keeping the plant's assets healthy.
While equipment upkeep and parts replacements are necessary, there are steps that can
reduce maintenance costs without decreasing industry processing facility's operational
efficiencies.

a) Examine the necessary things to do and not:

• When first purchasing the equipment in an industry, ensure the review its
maintenance requirements with the manufacturers and the subject matter experts,
whether those are engineers or senior maintenance professionals.

• It should confirm that all of the suggested maintenance is actually needed, as

unnecessary maintenance can actually induce equipment failure.
• For example, at one of the plant, pumps were undergoing preventive maintenance
every quarter to prevent pump failures. This maintenance was actually inducing
premature failure.
• After engineering performed a detailed root-cause analysis, a different pump was
specified and preventive maintenance was moved to a yearly event, leading to
better system performance and reduced maintenance costs.
• Benefits: Decreased labour costs, Reduced parts purchases, Increased the
efficiency and overall uptime of the system

b) Select a suitable measurement system:

• Take a compressor, for example. Some companies may think they need to rebuild
a compressor every three years. But what if that compressor runs only one month
out of every four months? You're basing your preventive maintenance on a
calendar year, not on the compressor's running hours.
• Preventive maintenance should be performed based on the most applicable
measurement system for the equipment.

c) Pick the optimal time to perform maintenance:

• ➢ Preventive maintenance should be scheduled maintenance, tuned to the
specific needs of the production schedule.
• This way, processing plant can take assets out of service at a time that allows
maximizing the uptime or efficiency.

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 • Most companies complete their preventive maintenance in the cooler months of
the year.
• Compressor and evaporator rebuilds are easier to perform in the winter because
the temperatures are not as hot, requiring less of a refrigeration load. This offsets
labour costs, too.

d) Maximize the efficiency of the industry staff :

• By training production workers to provide preventive maintenance assistance on a
daily or weekly basis, have to maximize the efficiency of processing plant staff
and take the preventive maintenance burden off of the senior professionals.
• Preventive maintenance tasks that production workers can complete include:
o Cleaning up the equipment
o Inspecting specific items
o Watching particular equipment characteristics
• However, once a monitored characteristic is showing signs of needing preventive
maintenance, you need to bring in a subject matter expert to complete the work or
provide additional planning.

e) Develop an overall maintenance strategy:

• Preventive maintenance is only one type of maintenance that should be part of the
overall strategy, including: Preventive maintenance, Predictive maintenance,
Reactive maintenance.
• If preventive maintenance in conjunction with a predictive and reactive
maintenance strategy, maintenance costs can control while managing downtime
and maximizing uptime.

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RELIABILITY
Reliability may be defined in several ways: The idea that an item is fit for a purpose with respect
to time. In the most discrete and practical sense: "Items that do not fail in use are reliable" and
"Items that do fail in use are not reliable".

The capacity of a designed, produced or maintained item to perform as required over time. The
capacity of a population of designed, produced or maintained items to perform as required over
time. The resistance to failure of an item over time. The probability of an item to perform a
required function under stated conditions for a specified period of time. In line with the creation
of safety cases for safety, the goal is to provide a robust set of qualitative and quantitative
evidence that an item or system will not contain unacceptable risk.

The basic sorts of steps to take are to: First thoroughly identify as many as possible reliability
hazards (e.g. relevant System Failure Scenarios item Failure modes, the basic Failure
mechanisms and root causes) by specific analysis or tests. Assess the Risk associated with them
by analysis and testing. Propose mitigations by which the risks may be lowered and controlled to
an acceptable level. Select the best mitigations and get agreement on final (accepted) Risk
Levels, possible based on cost-benefit analysis.

RELIABILITY THEORY
Reliability is defined as the probability that a device will perform its intended function during a
specified period of time under stated conditions. Mathematically, this may be expressed as,

Where is the failure probability density function and is the length of the period of time
(which is assumed to start from time zero).

Equipment Life Cycle and Reliability

Reliability

Reliability engineering is engineering that emphaisis dependability in the lifecycle management

of a product. The failure pattern of equipment over its whole life cycle can be represented as
bath-curve as shown in figure. This curve represents the pattern of failure for many products,
especially complex products such as cars and washing machines. The bath-tub curve is divided
into three regions such as infant mortality, useful life and wear out.

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In Phase I, the failure pattern inherent in a new product because of manufacturing or design
defects. Therefore, the failure rate at the beginning of infant mortality stage is high and then it
decreases with time after early failures are removed by burn-in or other stress screening methods.
It is referred to infant mortality period of equipment.

Phase II shows the useful life period of an equipment where the failure rates are normally
moderate as the equipment gets set to the working environment. This period is usually given the
most consideration during the design stage and it is the most significant period for reliability
prediction and evaluation activities.

In Phase III, the failures are occurring due to wear outs which are caused due to ageing of the
equipment. The equipment life cycle is the essential requirement for the prediction of system
reliability. The other important parameters such as repair time distribution can be used to
estimate availability, maintainability and level of corrective and preventive maintenance.

Availability
Availability of a system may also be increased by the strategy of focusing on increasing
testability, diagnostics and maintainability and not on reliability. Improving maintainability
during the early design phase is generally easier than reliability (and Testability & diagnostics).

Define availability and method of measuring availability.

Availability is the ratio of the time at which the equipment is available for the designated
operation service to the total time of operation and maintenance of the equipment. It is also
defined as the ration of equipments uptime to the equipment uptime and down time over a
specified period of time.

The uptime of a machine / equipment is the time for which it is in actually available to
complete the desired function. The downtime or outage of a machine is the period of time
during which it is not in an acceptable working condition.

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AVAILABILITY
A Reliability Program Plan may also be used to evaluate and improve availability of a system
by the strategy on focusing on increasing testability & maintainability and not on reliability.
Improving maintainability is generally easier than reliability. Maintainability estimates (Repair
rates) are also generally more accurate. However, because the uncertainties in the reliability
estimates are in most cases very large, it is likely to dominate the availability (prediction
uncertainty) problem; even in the case maintainability levels are very high.

When reliability is not under control more complicated issues may arise, like manpower
(maintainers / customer service capability) shortage, spare part availability, logistic delays, lack
of repair facilities, extensive retro-fit and complex configuration management costs and others.

The problem of unreliability may be increased also due to the "Domino effect" of maintenance
induced failures after repairs.

Only focusing on maintainability is therefore not enough. If failures are prevented, none of the
others are of any importance and therefore reliability is generally regarded as the most important
part of availability.

The three types of availability are

o Inherent availability
o Achieved availability
o Operational availability
• Inherent availability:
It is the probability that a system or equipment shall operate satisfactorily when
used under prescribed conditions in a ideal support environment without any
scheduled or preventive maintenance at any given time.

Inherent availability = MTBM/ MTBM+MTTR

Achieved Availability:
It is the probability that a system or equipment shall operate satisfactorily when used
under prescribed conditions in an ideal support environment with periodic preventive and
corrective maintenance at any given time.
Achieved availability = MTBM/ MTBM+M

Operational Availability:
In industrial system a certain amount of delay will always caused by time element such as
supply downtime and administrative downtime.
Operational availability = MTBM/ MTBM+MDT
Where MDT is the mean downtime is the satisfied mean of the downtimes including the
supply downtime and administrative downtime.

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In general availability of a system is a complex function of reliability, maintainability and
supply effectiveness.
As = f (Rs, Ms, Se)

Briefly describe the Accelerated Testing.

The purpose of accelerated life testing is to induce field failure in the laboratory at a much faster
rate by providing a harsher, but nonetheless representative, environment. Accelerated Life
Testing is a method for stress testing of manufactured products that attempts to duplicate
the normal wear and tear that would normally be experienced over the usable lifetime of
the product in a shorter time period.

In such a test, the product is expected to fail in the lab just as it would have failed in the field—
but in much less time.
The main objective of an accelerated test is either of the following:
• To discover failure modes.
• To predict the normal field life from the high stress lab life.

Accelerate cause (something) to happen sooner, Life is the period of duration, usefulness,
or popularity of something, testing means by which the presence, quality, or genuineness
of anything is determined by means of trial.

Goals of ALT Accelerated Life Testing: Most Important goals of Up Front Product Life
Testing (In-house or Beta Sites) & Data analyses are to gain information for Fundamental
Improvements and Proactive reliability improvement before Product Release.
➢ Purpose of ALT: Reliability estimation at user level and dominant failures
mechanism identification.

Types of accelerated tests: a) ESS and burn-in. b) Qualitative tests, c) Quantitative tests

➢ Environmental Stress Screening (ESS):

A process involving the application of environmental stimuli to products. The goal of
ESS is to expose, identify and eliminate latent defects which cannot be detected by visual
inspection or electrical testing but which will cause failures in the field. ESS is performed
on the entire population and does not involve sampling.

➢ Burn-in:
Burn-in can be regarded as special case of ESS. It is a test performed for the purpose of
screening or eliminating marginal devices. These devices are those with inherent defects
or defects resulting from manufacturing aberrations which cause time and stress
dependent failures. As with ESS, burn-in is performed on the entire population.

➢ Qualitative tests:
An accelerated test that yields failure information or failure modes only is commonly
called a qualitative test or elephant test. Over stressing of products to “quickly” obtain
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failures is perhaps the oldest form of reliability testing. It increases reliability by
revealing probable failure modes.

➢ Quantitative tests:
Quantitative accelerated life testing, unlike Qualitative testing, is designed to provide
reliability information on the product, component or system. Data needed in quantitative
test is time to failure, such as hours, days, cycles, miles, actuations etc.

Common form of ALT is continuous use acceleration. Estimate the life distribution of the
product in a shorter time.

MTTR, MTBR, Failure Rate, Availability and Reliability

The objective of this lecture is to bring clarity in understanding the two often confused terms
viz, Availability and Reliability, by explaining in simple perspective for the purpose of
understanding by a common maintenance man.
Let’s try to understand through this picture.

How do we measure Reliability

1. MTBR (H) value is a direct measure of Reliability. More the MTBR more is the
Reliability.
2. The Failure Rate (ʎ): In simple expression this can be calculated as No of Failures / Total
Time
Now Let’s tabulate the results

Case Duration Failures Downtime Availability MTBR Failure

(H) (H) (%) (H) Rate (ʎ)
1 1008 6 108 89.2 150 0.00595
2 1008 2 108 89.2 450 0.00198
We have clearly seen that for the same amount of Equipment Availability, Equipment Reliability
changes drastically. So our Equipment in Case2 is more reliable.

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Here I want to share a screen-shot ( used in one of my previous documents ) . This has a realtime
data of an Equipment with performance relevant to present discussion. See this picture.

The Equipment03 in Year 1314 has Availability of the order 99.58% but
lowest Reliability (MTBR) of 95.57 Hrs. Compare this with the 2nd line: Equipment02 has
lowest Availability 99.39% but good Reliability (MTBR) around 400 Hrs.

So, we understand that

A Highly Reliable Machine is Highly Available Machine too, but the converse need not be true.
Lastly, let’s try to understand the practical significance of the term Reliability. In process
industries if a chain of machines run without any problem for several hours then a stage comes
for the final equipment deliver the finished product. Often paper industry is quoted as an
example. If a machine breaks down like case1, the finished paper will never come-out of the
paper machine.

Then, a question might arise, that ‘Why Reliability can not be directly based on the No. of
Failures?’ The answer could be ‘Yes, it is ! But it is calculated as a function of No. of Failures
per a Specified period , where this period might differ from process to process and hence the
acceptability of Reliability Index‘.

This is the time-line of a particular Equipment where U is Operating time (Uptime in Hrs), D is
Repair time (Downtime in Hrs). A total period of 6 weeks has been taken for analysis.
Two cases have been depicted here .
Case1:
No. of Failures = 6 (Denominator for MTTR, MTBR Calculations)
Total Uptime = U1 + U2 +U3 + U4 + U5 + U6 + U7. = Say 900 Hrs.
Total Downtime = D1 + D2 + D3 + D4 + D5 + D6. = Say 108 Hrs.
We know that MTTR (Mean Time to Repair in Hrs) = ( D1 + D2 + D3 + D4 + D5 + D6 ) / 6
= 18 .
Similarly MTBR (Mean Time Between Repairs in Hrs) = ( U1 + U2 +U3 + U4 + U5 + U6 +
U7 ) / 6 = 150 .
Now,
Equipment Availability (%) is: UpTime / Total Time = (900 / 1008) * 100 = 89.2
Another formula for Equipment Availability in practice is [MTBR / (MTTR + MTBR)] * 100
= (150 / 168 )*100 = 89.2
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Case2:
No. of Failures = 2 (Denominator for MTTR, MTBR Calculations)
Suppose here too we get the same total values like:
Total Uptime = U1 + U2 +U3 = Say 900 Hrs
Total Downtime = D1 + D2 = Say 108 Hrs
MTTR (H) = ( D1 + D2) / 2 = 54 .
MTBR (H) = ( U1 + U2 + U3) / 2 = 450 .
Equipment Availability (%) is: Uptime / Total Time = (900 / 1008) * 100 = 89.2
Through other formula for Equipment Availability : [MTBR / (MTTR + MTBR)] * 100 = (450
/ 504 )*100 = 89.2
We have seen the Availability, Now let’s see the Reliability. What is Reliability?
Reliability can be broadly defined as the probability that an Equipment will perform its
intended functions continuously for a specified duration
MEAN TIME BETWEEN FAILURES
Mean time between failures (MTBF) is the predicted elapsed time between inherent failures of a
system during operation. MTBF can be calculated as the arithmetic mean (average) time between
failures of a system.

FORMAL DEFINITION OF MTBF

By referring to the figure above, the MTBF is the sum of the operational periods divided by the
number of observed failures.

The MTBF is often denoted by the Greek letter θ, or

The MTBF can be defined in terms of the expected value of the density function ƒ(t)

where ƒ is the density function of time until failure – satisfying the standard requirement
of density functions –

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The Overview
For each observation, downtime is the instantaneous time it went down, which is after i.e. greater
than) the moment it went up, uptime. The difference (downtime minus uptime) is the amount of
time it was operating between these two events.

MTBF value prediction is an important element in the development of products.

Reliability engineers / design engineers, often utilize Reliability Software to calculate products'
MTBF according to various methods/standards (MIL-HDBK-217F, Telcordia SR332, Siemens
Norm, FIDES,UTE 80-810 (RDF2000), etc.).
However, these "prediction" methods are not intended to reflect fielded MTBF as is commonly
believed. The intent of these tools is to focus design efforts on the weak links in the design

MTTR
MTTR is an abbreviation that has several different expansions, with greatly differing meanings.
It is wise to spell out exactly what is meant by the use of this abbreviation, rather than assuming
the reader will know which is being assumed.
The M can stand for any of minimum, mean or maximum, and the R can stand for any of
recovery, repair, respond, or restore.
The most common, mean, is also subject to interpretation, as there are many different ways in
which a mean can be calculated.
Mean time to repair
Mean time to recovery/Mean time to restore
Mean time to respond
Mean time to replace
In an engineering context with no explicit definition, the engineering figure of merit, mean time
to repair would be the most probable intent by virtue of seniority of usage.

It is also similar in meaning to the others above (more in the case of recovery, less in the case of
respond, the latter being more properly styled mean "response time").

Derive the expression for determining Mean Time to Failure (MTTF).

Let t, is the time to failure for the first specimen, t is the time to failure for the second
specimen and tn is the time to failure for the N specimen. Hence the mean time to failure
for N specimens are

HTTF = (t1+t2+.......tn) /n = 1/N

It is difficult to record the failure for each component when the numbers of specimens
tested are large. Instead, we can record the number which fails during the specific
intervals of time.

If n1 is the number of specimens that failed during the first hour, n2 is the number that
failed during the second hour and nk is the number that failed during the kth hour.
Then the mean time to failure for N specimens is

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MTTF = (n1 + 2n2 + 3n3 +....knk) / N
It is better to represent the time as interval of the time as such as. Hence the time interval
is Δt instead of one hour.
Then MTTF is calculated as
MTTF = (n1 Δt +2n2 Δt +. ... + knkΔt +..... + lnl Δt) /N
MTTF = (n1 Δt +2n2 Δt +. ... + knkΔt +..... + rnr Δt) /N
MTTF = 1/N Σ knkΔt (k = 1 to r)

Where n1 is the number of specimens that failed during the first interval, n2 is the number
of specimens that failed during the second interval and nk is the number of specimens that
failed during the kth time interval and so on.

Unit 1 Principles and practices of maintenance planning

Questions
1. State the various objectives of maintenance planning and explain the major areas governing
the principles of maintenance?
2. Explain in detail the various types of maintenance organization?
3. Explain the important factors to be considered in determining the reliability of industrial
system?
4. Explain the various types of availability?
5. State the factors involved in determining the maintenance cost in an industry and the steps
necessary to reduce the maintenance cost?
6. Explain productivity and maintenance.
7. Describe the roll of R&D in maintenance organisation.
8. What is equipment availability and describe the three basic approaches in detail.(December
2015)
8. Explain the salient features of shut down planning and execution.
9. Explain in availability, MTBF, MTTR and failure rate.
10. Define availability and method of measuring availability.
11. Briefly explain the maintenance economics.

Unit-II Maintenance policies- Preventive maintenance

1. Briefly discuss about the evolution of TPM and the various stages involved in
implementation of TPM?
2. Explain in detail the pillars of TPM?
3. Briefly explain maintenance scheduling?
4. Explain in detail the methods of lubrication?
5. With a suitable example explain repair cycle?
6. Explain the planned maintenance. Discuss about preventive maintenance.
7. Write short notes on RCM with a flow diagram.
8. Explain the annual and monthly preventive maintenance schedules.
9. Briefly explain the different stages of repair cycle.
10. Explain the procedure for TPM.

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