Maintenance of the

plant
Maintenance Policies

Maintenance of plant and equipment in good working order is

essential to achieve specified levels of quality and reliability and
efficient working
• The best equipment will not work satisfactorily unless it is cared for
• The cost of a breakdown in the system can be very high
• Not only in financial terms but also in poor staff morale and bad
relations with customers.
• The workforce and materials must also be ‘maintained’
• Through training, motivation, health care and even
entrainment for the people, and
• Proper storage and handling of materials.
Objectives of maintenance
1. Enable product quality and customer satisfaction through
correctly adjusted, serviced and operated equipment.
2. Maximize the useful life of the equipment.
3. Keep equipment safe and prevent the development of safety
hazards.
4. Minimize the total costs directly attributed to equipment
service and repair
5. Minimize the frequency and severity of interruptions to operating
processes.
6. Maximize production capacity from the given equipment resources.

Within the concept of maintenance, ‘failure’ is defined as an inability

to produce work in the appropriate manner rather than the inability to
produce any work.
Failure
It is important to be clear about what is meant by failure
• When a product or component no longer performs its
required function, it is said to have failed.
• This definition assumes that the required function is known
exactly.
Types of failure
• Total failure: a complete lack of ability of the product or service to
perform the required function.
• Partial failure: The item does not work, or the service is not
provided as well as expected, but it has not completely failed.
• Gradual failure: this takes place progressively over a period of time
and could possibly be anticipated by some sort of examination.
• Sudden failure: occurs quickly and is not easily predicted by
investigation or examination.
Causes of failure
• There are many causes of product and/or service failure but
two main general ones are common:
• Weakness: this is inherent in the product or service itself and,
when subject to the normal stresses of use, result in one of
the types of failure. (Weakness is usually introduced by poor
design, materials, processes or operation)
Causes of failure cont’d
• Misuse: this represents the application of stresses which are
outside the usual capability of the product or service system
• A piece of plant which deteriorates and consequently
produces work of low a quality or at too high a cost is said to
fail.
• Work carried out before failure is said to be overhaul, od
preventive maintenance work, while
• Work that carried out after failure is emergency, breakdown or
recovery work.
Overhaul Emergency

Preventive Breakdown

Maintenance Recovery
Failure

Time
 Derivation of total cost of maintenance policy

Total costs
Cost/unit produced

Maintenance costs

Breakdown costs

Frequency of overhaul
Note: The total cost curve is the sum of the other two
Chase and Aquilano pointed out that the maintenance system exists
within and as part of the operating system as a whole
• The need of the sub-system may appear to conflict with the need of
the system itself.
• Example, frequent overhauls may reduce cost by avoiding expensive
breakdowns, but
• The more frequent the overhaul the lower the availability of the
plant
• It is the total cost which must be examined in order to discover the
most satisfactory maintenance policy.
• The cost associated with equipment failure and the cost of overhaul
work are compared and a maintenance plan put in place which
offers a satisfactory match of costs and equipment availability.
• The term planned maintenance, historically been described as
preventive.
• There are many cases where the best policy is to allow the
equipment to fail before carrying out maintenance work: run-to-fail
Two broad types of maintenance policy
1. Repair or replacement due to equipment failure
2. Preventive maintenance

The first type is an emergency-base policy, in which the plant or

equipment is operated until it fails and then it is maintained.
Formal preventive
maintenance
This takes four different forms:
1. Time-base
2. Work-base
3. Opportunity-base
4. Condition-base
These various types of policy often operate together, overlap or
coincide.
To be continued