OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

CHAPTER 10

MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT

Learning Objectives
After going through this unit, you will be able to:
Arrange for preventive maintenance
Arrange for predictive maintenance
Arrange for corrective maintenance
Do the FMEA
Control MTBF

Structure

10.1 Maintenance Management Concept

10.2 Plant Breakdown
10.3 Planned Maintenance
10.4 Unplanned Maintenance
10.5 Key Words
10.6 Summary

10.1 Maintenance Management Concept

Today's plants are regarded as high technology plants. These plants,

compared to earlier plants are bigger in capacity, involve high speed
machinery, complex and precise designs, more automation and therefore
pose difficulties in maintenance.
Due to large investment, down time cost of these plants is enormous. Since
machinery and its arrangement is engineered for continuous production,
stoppage / malfunctioning / breakdown of a single machine can cause
stoppage of the whole plant. This is true more so in chemical process
industries.
With the advancement of technology, production function is getting simplified
day by day due to built-in automated controls, while maintenance function is
becoming complex, increasingly difficult and important for survival.
Each equipment and its different systems (parts and components) are
subjected to stresses and physical exhaustion which cause their wear and
tear. Temperature changes, vibrations, friction between the mating parts,
corrosion etc. are but to name few which cause deterioration and create a gap
between the performance of the system in use and performance obtainable
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from it. Some sort of action is necessary to (i) keep rate of wear and tear at its
minimum and (ii) restore the equipment back to acceptable level when the gap
in performance increases beyond acceptable limit. Such actions/activities are
termed as maintenance. Maintenance thus may be defined - “A set of activities
performed to keep equipment in the specified condition or it is a remedial
action to restore the equipment to its specified condition.”
The act of keeping equipment in the specified condition is called, preventive
maintenance while the act of restoring it is called corrective maintenance.
Therefore, two basic constituents of a maintenance system are: preventive
maintenance and corrective maintenance

All machines tend to deteriorate in performance with use over the period
due to the process of wear and tear. A number of factors contribute to the
functional degradation (or wear and tear) of the machines of which typical
ones are: temperature rise, vibrations, looseness, seasoning of parts,
accumulation of dust, rusting of parts etc.
The process of deterioration of the machine is reflected in:
The inability of the machine to take up the specified load.
The inability of the machine to produce within the specification limits,
thereby causing rejection and/or rework.
The inability of the machine to attain specified speed (e.g. vehicles).
The reduction in the useful life of the various components of the machine
(i.e. frequent failure of parts).
Increased hazards to the safety of employees working on or near the
machines.

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This process of deterioration, if not checked, culminates into an eventual

breakdown, an unplanned and unexpected stoppage of the machine.
Systematic maintenance though can't eliminate the process of wear and tear
yet it can significantly lower it. A good maintenance system is not a luxury but a
necessity. One of the major causes of poor productivity of Indian industries is
poor maintenance practices. Majority of the companies in India use the
concept of breakdown maintenance which is too costly to use (six big losses
explained later).
Maintenance, Repair and Operations or Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul
(MRO) is fixing any sort of mechanical or electrical device should it become out
of order or broken (repair) as well as performing the routine actions which keep
the device in working order (maintenance) or prevent trouble from arising
(preventive maintenance).
The European Federation of National Maintenance Societies defines
maintenance as:
All actions which have the objective of retaining or restoring an item in or to a
state in which it can perform its required function. The actions include the
combination of all technical and corresponding administrative, managerial,
and supervision actions.
In telecommunication, the term maintenance has the following meanings:

1. Any activity, such as tests, measurements, replacements, adjustments and

repairs, intended to retain or restore a functional unit in or to a specified state in
which the unit can perform its required functions.
2. [For material], All action taken to retain material in a serviceable condition or
to restore it to serviceability. It includes inspection, testing, servicing,
classification as to serviceability, repair, rebuilding, and reclamation.
3. [For material], All supply and repair action taken to keep a force in condition
to carry out its mission.
4. [For material], The routine recurring work required to keep a facility (plant,
building, structure, ground facility, utility system, or other real property) in such
condition that it may be continuously used, at its original or designed capacity
and efficiency for its intended purpose.
Source: from Federal Standard 1037C and from MIL-STD-188 and from the
Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms
Manufacturers and Industrial Supply Companies often refer to MRO as
opposed to Original Equipment Manufacture (OEM). OEM includes any
activity related to the direct manufacture of goods, where MRO refers to any
maintenance and repair activity to keep a manufacturing plant running.
Industrial Supply Companies can generally be sorted into two types:
the ones who cater to the MRO market generally carry a broad range of items
such as fasteners, conveyors, cleaning goods, plumbing, and tools to keep a
plant running.
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OEM supply companies generally provide a smaller range of goods in much

larger quantities with much lower prices, selling materials that will be regularly
consumed in the manufacturing process to create the finished item.

10.2 Plant Breakdown

Besides design/manufacturing defects, the cause of plant breakdown can be

attributed to one or more of the following:

Excessive friction between the parts (e.g. insufficient/improper/lack of

lubrication).
Failure to replace parts that are known to wear (e.g. filters contacts and
brushes).
Neglected cooling system (e.g. failure to clean vents, grills and ducting
etc.)
Neglected common minor faults. (e.g. vibrations, temperature, metal
fatigue in minor items such as retaining or contact springs and locking
devices).
Temporary or permanent external factors leading to plant failure (e.g.
overloading of machines, wrong fuel, obstruction of air intakes, faults in
another items of equipment).
Design or manufacturing defects of the equipment (or its one or more
components).
Installation deficiencies.
Improper handling of the machine by the operators (e.g. lack of
knowledge, improper training).

Costs Associated With Breakdown

Unplanned and unexpected stoppage of a machine can cause big losses
consisting of the following tangible and intangible losses.

Down time cost : Down time cost refers to the loss due to non-absorption
of overheads for the period the machine is under breakdown and it
approximately equals the product of machine hour rate and down time of
the machine.

Idle wages: Idle wage paid to the direct workmen for the period the
machine is under repairs and it equals the product of labour hourly rate
and down time of the machine.

Loss of materials: Unexpected breakdowns usually result in loss of

material being worked upon which is either to be scrapped or reworked.

Cost of repairs: Unexpected breakdowns usually cost more to repair,

partly due to damage done to the adjacent components and partly due to
the emergency action.

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Opportunity cost: Opportunity cost implies the foregone profit due to

inability of the company to produce.

Effect on other machines: The broken-down machine at times may

render other machines which are dependent on deceased machine, idle.
The cost of idle time of such machines requires to be considered towards
cost of breakdown.

Expediting cost: Eventual breakdowns are not anticipated. The

disturbed schedules cause queuing which leads to overtime, off loading on
other units, job splitting etc.

Accident cost: Accident cost implies the compensation payable to the

employee for the injury caused by the eventual breakdown. Injury to the
workmen may be caused either directly from the breakdown or indirectly
from the confusion and hurried actions required to repair the machine.

Set up cost: Breakdown on a machine is normally accompanied by

added machine set ups

Tool breakage: The failure of hydraulic system in a machine, for

example, may result in loosening of job thereby causing breakage of tool.

Increase in WIP inventory: Breakdown on the machine usually

increases manufacturing cycle time since jobs are held up near the broken
down machines which increases investment in WIP inventory.

Overtime wages: Since the machine has broken down in normal

production, it is very likely that it will be required very urgently. Overtime
payment will have to be paid to maintenance team to get the machine back
into operation at the earliest.

Spare parts: If a spare part is required and is not readily available it will
have to be purchased from the market at higher (premium) price.

Reduced life of the equipment: Frequent breakdowns tend to reduce

the life of the equipment thus necessitating premature replacement of the
equipment which not only entails capital investment but also affects
depreciation structure.

Customer dissatisfaction: Eventual breakdowns usually cause failure

in delivery commitments. And frequent failures in delivery commitments in
turn lead to customer dissatisfaction, or at times even cancellation of
orders, or loss of customer.

Lowered morale: A shop plagued by frequent breakdowns of the

machines accompanied by changes in machine setups, splitting up of
planned batches, supervisors shouting at the pitch of their voices,
production control personnel following up supervisory staff to expedite

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items, refusal of the supervisor to sanction leave etc. is hardly expected to

have good morale.
Higher spares inventory investment: No fixed pattern of consumption
of spares can be expected if there are eventual breakdowns. In order to
shorten down time period, usual tendency is to stock large number of
spares in the store. Such inventory usually consists of parts which do not
move for a long time.

Cost of standby equipment: In order to keep their production going, and

avoid loss due to breakdown, companies install equipments. Such
investments result in additional cost.

Objectives Of A Good Maintenance System

Maintenance system in any industrial firm needs to be engineered to serve the
following objectives:
Ensuring maximum plant availability by preventing unexpected
breakdowns and by reducing shutdown periods.
Maintenance of equipment at its rated productivity and original accuracy.
Minimization of wear and tear to increase the longevity of the equipment.
Elimination of unsafe conditions that cause accidents thereby ensuring
safety of the workmen.
Increase in productivity of machines though improvements and
modifications made during scheduled overhauls.
Achievement of all the above objectives at the least cost of the company.

Activity A: List the causes of 8 break down

Activity B: List the costs associated with break down

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10.3 Planned Maintenance

Maintenance is of two types: Planned maintenance and Unplanned

maintenance.

Planned maintenance: Planned maintenance refers to the system of

maintenance wherein the maintenance work is planned (i.e. maintenance
activities are dovetailed with a time schedule) in advance work is executed as
per schedule, actions taken (maintenance work activities performed) are
recorded on completion, historical and statistical records so produced and
maintained are reviewed/analyzed to identify gaps/deficiencies in planning
and feedback is utilized to devise strategies (adjust/modify/incorporate
changes in the original plan) for accomplishing better performance.
Planned maintenance can be divided into preventive maintenance and
corrective maintenance.

I. Preventive maintenance anticipates failures and adopts necessary

actions to check failures before they occur. It includes activities like inspection,
lubrication, cleaning and upkeep, minor adjustments and replacements found
necessary at the time of inspection etc. Preventive maintenance can be either:
running maintenance” or “shut down maintenance.”

Running maintenance includes preventive maintenance activities (e.g. minor

adjustments in machines revealed through inspections, lubrication, cleaning
and upkeep etc.) which are carried out when the machine is still running.
Shutdown maintenance includes preventive maintenance activities such as
minor component replacement whose needs are identified through
inspections which require stoppage of machines.
Preventive maintenance (PM) has the following meanings:
The care and servicing by personnel for the purpose of maintaining equipment
and facilities in satisfactory operating condition by providing for systematic
inspection, detection, and correction of incipient failures either before they
occur or before they develop into major defects.
Maintenance, including tests, measurements, adjustments, and parts
replacement, performed specifically to prevent faults from occurring.
Source: from Federal Standard 1037C and from MIL-STD-188 and from the
Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms
While preventive maintenance is generally considered to be worthwhile, it is
important to note that there are risks such as equipment failure or human error
involved when performing PM, just as in any maintenance operation. PM is
also sometimes augmented by Reliability Centered Maintenance, which
attempts to determine the best PM tasks, and by predictive maintenance,
which models past behavior to predict failures.

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To make it simple: Preventive maintenance is conducted to keep equipment

working and/or extend the life of the equipment
Preventive inspection is one of the key activities of preventive maintenance
which is usually performed by making use of human senses - watch (eye),
listen (ear), touch (hand, leg, body), smell (nose) and taste (tongue) - but the
trend is now changing towards use of condition monitoring instruments. Such a
maintenance practice is known as predictive maintenance or condition based
maintenance.
Preventive maintenance is a schedule of planned maintenance actions aimed
at the prevention of breakdowns and failures. The primary goal of preventive
maintenance is to prevent the failure of equipment before it actually occurs. It is
designed to preserve and enhance equipment reliability by replacing worn
components before they actually fail. Preventive maintenance activities
include equipment checks, partial or complete overhauls at specified periods,
oil changes, lubrication and so on. In addition, workers can record equipment
deterioration so they know to replace or repair worn parts before they cause
system failure. Recent technological advances in tools for inspection and
diagnosis have enabled even more accurate and effective equipment
maintenance. The ideal preventive maintenance program would prevent all
equipment failure before it occurs.

Basic activities of preventive maintenance:

Preventive maintenance encompasses the following activities:
(i) Preventive inspection
(ii) Planned lubrication
(iii) Cleaning and upkeep
(iv) Minor adjustments and repair
(v) Equipment records
(vi) Spares control
(vii) Condition monitoring

A. Preventive Inspection
Preventive inspection is an integral part of the preventive maintenance
programme. Inspection is carried out systematically, at periodical intervals, by
the staff specially trained, to determine the condition of the equipment.
Preventive inspection identifies:
Parts which are might have worn out or deteriorated.
Surfaces which might have got corroded.
Bolts and nuts which might have become loose due to vibrations.
Elements (e.g. lead screw and nuts, worm and worm wheel, etc.) which
might have developed excessive play (or backlash).
Alignments which might have gone out of order.
Defects which might have been caused due to overheating.
Other hoists of defects.
These defects if not corrected on time may cause malfunctioning of the
equipment, or result in breakdown of the machine, or be a reason for the
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hazards. Corrective action can be taken if they are noticed well in time and
breakdown can be avoided by rectifying them when they are still in minor
stages. Such a maintenance approach is helpful in number of ways:
If the impending problems are of not serious nature, the repair work can
be carried out without affecting production.
Production personnel can be told of the impending danger (if is of serious
nature) and can be coaxed to release the machine immediately for repairs
which reduces friction between the departments.
Such repairs require lesser time as compared to that of breakdown repair
which reduces maintenance cost and improves plant availability.
Preventive inspection is of two types: (i) External and (ii) Internal.

External inspection is the inspection intended to detect such as abnormal

sound, heat, smoke, vibrations, etc. and is carried out, by making use of
human senses, when the equipment is in operation.
Five human senses and typical maintenance related characteristics that can
be observed by preventive inspection are recorded in Table1.
Table 1 : Preventive inspection by five human senses
Human sense Typical maintenance by five human
senses
1. Eye (watch) Leakage (oil/water), wear, crack, oil level/oil
gauge, scoring, smoothness of rotation/slide,
dust, corrosion etc.
2. Ear (listen) Impact, rotation, air leakage, looseness etc.
3. Hand, leg and body (touch) Vibrations temperature, roughness, dust,
crack, air leakage etc.
4. Nose (small) Burn-out, exhaust gas or oil.
5. Tongue (taste) Sweet, salt, acid
For example,

(i) Deviation from the normal sound of the machine can be heard.
(ii) Temperature of motors, bearings, and similar parts can be felt.
(iii) Scoring of parts caused due to wear can be observed.
(iv) Bolts and nuts which become loose due to vibrations can be identified and
tightened.
(v) Inspection of sight glass can reveal whether or not gear elements are
getting lubricated or not.
Internal inspection is meant to identify defects in moving parts, internal
cracks, and others when the machine is under pre-planned shutdowns.
Internal inspection may also be conducted to investigate into the causes of
defects noticed during external inspection.
For example, equipment requires to be stopped to study the:
Wear of the gears.
True running of the spindle.
When to inspect?
Maintenance activity apparently involves conflict, the conflict of
departmental objectives. Production personnel expect maximum machine
availability and demand instant service and quick repairs whenever plant
failure occurs while maintenance men like to plan work in a way that utilizes

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departmental resources efficiently as far as possible. Preventive inspection,

as a general rule, should be carried out without interrupting production activity.
A great deal of opportunity exists to do this:
Natural breaks during working hours (Some of the preventive
maintenance activities can be synchronized and performed during natural
gaps like lunch breaks of the production workmen).
Non-production hours (2nd and 3rd shifts in companies working single
shift).
Weekly off and holidays.
Stand-up-equipment.
Machine set-ups.
A. Planned Lubrication
Planned lubrication is said to be the nervous system of the equipment. Regular
lubrication with carefully selected lubricants is an essential factor in the
maintenance of high grade machine tools working under continuous loads.

Lubricants help to -
Retard the rate of wear and tear of moving parts by converting solid
friction into liquid friction.
Keep the temperature of bearings within the allowable limits.
Protect parts from moisture, dust and corrosion.
Keep power consumption within the allowable limits.
Studies have shown that root cause of most of the breakdowns is the failure of
the lubrication system and a well planned lubrication programme must form
the nucleus of the preventive maintenance programme.
Essentials of well planned lubrication systems are:

Proper identification of lubrication points (Right place).

Right selection of the lubricant. (Right quality).
Optimum frequency of lubrication. (Right time).
Optimum quantity of the lubricant. (Right quantity).
Proper care and storage of lubricants (Right care).

Responsibilities of lubrication
The responsibility of lubrication in a small unit may be delegated to the
workmen under the control of the shop supervisor. And in a large unit, the
responsibility of lubrication should be placed in the hands of a central
lubrication body under the supervision of Lubrication Engineer. The body
operating on a planned schedule should ensure that every unit in the entire
plant receives correct and regular lubrication.
Many a sophisticated machine tools like gear hobbers, spline grinders, boring
machines etc. have centralized lubrication systems. Hand lever provided on to
the machines for centralized lubrication requires to be actuated two to three
times per shift to enable lubrication of the elements. Such lubrication system
naturally requires that the task should be delegated to the workmen.

Cleaning and Upkeep

Cleaning and upkeep of the machines is another important activity of
preventive maintenance. Periodical cleaning of the machine is required to
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prevent ingression of dust into the components. Dust gets mixed with
lubricants, forms an abrasive substance and causes pre-mature failure of
machinery. The collection of dust on equipment also leads to destruction of
protective coatings which further accelerate the rate of wear and tear of the
equipment. Besides periodic cleaning of machines and surrounding areas
provides tidy and clean working environment which itself improves
maintenance efficiency.
The activity of periodic cleaning of machines is usually assigned to workmen.
However, machine elements and accessories which require dismantling are
attended to by the maintenance department. A well designed preventive
maintenance system incorporates periodic cleaning of plant and equipment
schedules as a part of its preventive maintenance activity.

C. Minor Adjustments and Replacements

Preventive inspection may identify certain points which require minor
adjustments and or replacements. Typical examples are :
Tightening of loose parts.
Replacements of oil filter and oil seals.
Replacement of damaged oil nipples.
Depending upon the urgency of work these preventive maintenance jobs
require to be scheduled.

B. Equipment Records
Good record keeping is the essence of good preventive maintenance.
The following documents and records must be maintained for smooth working
of the department:

a) Instruction manuals
Instruction manuals are the catalogues supplied by the manufacturers of the
machines along with the equipment. An instruction manual:
Gives instructions regarding installation and operation of the equipment.
Enlists points for lubrication, frequency of lubrication, and type of
lubricant.
Guides maintenance department regarding preventive inspection of the
different parts of the equipment.
Contains notes on common troubles with causes and remedies for trouble
shooting by the maintenance staff.
Instruction manuals are, therefore, very useful catalogues. They must be
arranged, numbered and filed properly so that they can be located, when
required, without loss of time.
Equally important is to maintain drawings of the parts of the equipment.
Manufacturers do not always give drawings of the components. Drawings may
be prepared for the parts which can be made at the home plant.

b) Spare-parts catalog
Some manufacturers furnish separate catalogue of the consumable and
replacement spares of their equipments. Such catalogues, therefore, must be
maintained properly so that identification of the worn out parts is made quickly.
c) Electrical and hydraulic circuits diagrams
Electrical and hydraulic circuit diagrams are normally appended to the
instruction manuals. These diagrams, due to frequent use by the maintenance
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personnel, get dirty, torn or even lost. It is, therefore, recommended that such
diagrams should be removed from the instruction manuals and transformed on
tracing paper. Only blue prints of the traced diagrams should be issued to the
maintenance personnel while their tracings should be kept in the office/library.
d) Equipment cards
An equipment card is the record of the information pertaining to the name and
address of the manufacturer of the equipment, purchase order number and
date, date of commissioning, equipment specifications, list of the accessories,
list of the major spares etc. Equipment card thus is a valuable document and
hence it must be maintained systematically.
e) Equipment history cards
An equipment history card is the record of all repairs, replacements and
engineering changes carried out in the equipment during its period in service.
An equipment history card:
Gives the record of the faults that occur in the equipment and work done to
remove each fault.
Gives the consumption record of the parts replaced from time to time.
Enables to relate spare parts consumption to significant variables such as
the age of the equipment.
Gives down time of the equipment due to each unexpected
breakdown or planned replacement of parts thereby providing enough data
to develop performance standards for the maintenance activities.

In lieu of above mentioned benefits, it is imperative to conclude that

equipment history cards are useful documents and therefore need to be
maintained systematically.
E. Failure statistics analysis :
Maintenance records (equipment history cards) should be analysed
periodically. The analysis helps to -
Identify causes for major repetitive failures and thereby take decisions for
their prevention in future.
Forecast defects and to make plan to rectify before failure occurs.
Quantify frequency of preventive inspections.
Highlight the reliability of the machines which helps production planning.
Decide optimum retentive period of the machine.
Provide management data to serve basis for selection of a new machine.

F. Spares Control :
Spare parts must be available as per need otherwise the down time
unnecessarily increases. A suitable system of inventory control of spares,
therefore, should be evolved to ensure availability of spares with minimum
capital lock up.
G. Condition monitoring :
It is the maintenance work initiated on a result on knowledge of the condition of
an item from routine or continuous checking. Corrective maintenance initiated
by the maintenance engineer to replace a bearing of a motor based on
observations of his maintenance man during a preventive maintenance
checkup by touching the outer casing of motor is nothing but condition
monitoring.
Condition reports arise from human observations, check & tests or from fixed
instrumentation or alarm system. All these methods are called condition
monitoring methods. On-line and off-line techniques of inspections are
involved for condition monitoring.
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H. Training of maintenance personnel

Sound training in the concept of preventive maintenance is essential for the
success of the PM program
Value of Preventive Maintenance
There are multiple misconceptions about preventive maintenance. One such
misconception is that PM is unduly costly. This logic dictates that it would cost
more for regularly scheduled downtime and maintenance than it would
normally cost to operate equipment until repair is absolutely necessary. This
may be true for some components; however, one should compare not only the
costs but the long-term benefits and savings associated with preventive
maintenance. Without preventive maintenance, for example, costs for lost
production time from unscheduled equipment breakdown will be incurred.
Also, preventive maintenance will result in savings due to an increase of
effective system service life.

benefits of preventive maintenance include:

Improved system reliability.
Decreased cost of replacement.
Decreased system downtime.
Better spares inventory management.
Long-term effects and cost comparisons usually favor preventive
maintenance over performing maintenance actions only when the system
fails.
Preventive maintenance is a logical choice if, and only if, the following two
conditions are met:
Condition #1: The component in question has an increasing failure rate. In
other words, the failure rate of the component increases with time, thus
implying wear-out. Preventive maintenance of a component that is assumed to
have an exponential distribution (which implies a constant failure rate) does
not make sense!
Condition #2: The overall cost of the preventive maintenance action must be
less than the overall cost of a corrective action. (Note: In the overall cost for a
corrective action, one should include ancillary tangible and/or intangible costs,
such as downtime costs, loss of production costs, lawsuits over the failure of a
safety-critical item, loss of goodwill, etc.)
If both of these conditions are met, then preventive maintenance makes
sense. Additionally, based on the costs ratios, an optimum time for such action
can be easily computed for a single component.
The Fallacy of "Constant Failure Rate" and "Preventive Replacement”
Even though we alluded to the fact in the last section of this on-line reference,
Availability, it is important to make it explicitly clear that if a component has a
constant failure rate (i.e. defined by an exponential distribution), then
preventive maintenance of the component will have no effect on the
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component's failure occurrences. To illustrate this, consider a component with

an MTTF = 100 hours, or λ = 0.01, and with preventive replacement every 50
hours.
consider the following cases for a single component:
Case 1: The component's reliability from 0 to 60 hours:
With preventive maintenance, the component was replaced with a new one
at 50 hours so the overall reliability is the reliability based on the reliability of the
new component for 10 hours, R(t = 10) = 90.48%, times the reliability of the
previous component, R(t = 50) = 60.65%. The result is R(t = 60) = 54.88%.
Without preventive maintenance, the reliability would be the reliability of the
same component operating to 60 hours, or R(t = 60) = 54.88%.
Case 2: The component's reliability from 50 to 60 hours:
With preventive maintenance, the component was replaced at 50 hours so
this is solely based on the reliability of the new component, for a mission of 10
hours, or R(t = 10) = 90.48%.
Without preventive maintenance, the reliability would be the conditional
reliability of the same component operating to 60 hours, having already
survived to 50 hours.
As it can be seen, both cases, with and without preventive maintenance, yield
the same results.
Determining Preventive Replacement Time
As mentioned earlier, if the component has an increasing failure rate, then a
carefully designed preventive maintenance program is beneficial to system
availability. Otherwise, the costs of preventive maintenance might actually
outweigh the benefits. The objective of a good preventive maintenance
program is to either minimize the overall costs (or downtime, etc.) or meet a
reliability objective. In order to achieve this, an appropriate interval (time) for
scheduled maintenance must be determined. One way to do that is to use the
optimum age replacement model, as presented next. The model adheres to
the conditions discussed previously, or:
The component is exhibiting behavior associated with a wear-out mode.
That is, the failure rate of the component is increasing with time.
The cost for planned replacements is significantly less than the cost for
unplanned replacements.
Thus, the corrective replacement costs increase as the replacement interval
increases. In other words, the less often we perform a PM action, the higher will
be our corrective costs.Thus, the longer we let a component operate, its failure
rate increases to a point that it is more likely to fail, thus requiring more
corrective actions. The opposite is true for the preventive replacement costs.
The longer you wait to perform a PM, the less the costs; while if you do PM too
often, the higher the costs. If we combine both costs, we can see that there is
an optimum point that minimizes the costs. In other words, one must strike a
balance between the risk (costs) associated with a failure while maximizing the
time between PM actions.
Optimum Age Replacement Policy
To determine the optimum time for such a preventive maintenance action

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(replacement), we need to mathematically formulate a model that describes

the associated costs and risks. In developing the model, it is assumed that if
the unit fails before time t, a corrective action will occur and if it does not fail by
time t, a preventive action will occur. In other words, the unit is replaced upon
failure or after a time of operation, t, whichever occurs first.
Thus, the optimum replacement time can be found by minimizing the cost per
unit time, CPUT(t).

Activity C: List the steps in preventive maintenance

I. Corrective Maintenance
Corrective maintenance: Preventive maintenance can significantly reduce
the rate of wear and tear of machinery but can't wholly eliminate it. Equipment
thus functionally degrades over the period and its performance gradually
drops below its acceptable limit. Corrective maintenance is the maintenance
work undertaken to compensate for wear and tear (e.g. overhauls etc.),
planned either on yearly, six monthly or some other basis, to restore the
equipment back to an acceptable condition.
Even if the firm has adopted preventive maintenance, some corrective
maintenance work is required, namely-
To rectify malfunction due to chance failure of the parts.
To rehabilitate /recondition of the equipment.
To replace major parts which have worn out (e.g. replacement of tubes in
a boiler)
To improve reliability and maintainability of the equipment by making
changes in design, materials, manufacturing process of parts thereby
eliminate the need for maintenance or reduce frequency of breakdowns.
Corrective maintenance, sometimes called "repair", is conducted to get
equipment working again.
Taking into consideration only breakdown idle time it can be split in some
components:
Operator's inspection time - That is the time required by the machine
operator to check the machine in order to detect the breakdown reason, before
calling the Maintenance department
Operator's repairing time - That means time required by machine operator to
fit the machine by himself in case he is able to do it.
Maintenance dead time - Time lost by machine operator waiting for the
machine to be repair by maintenance personnel, from the time they start doing
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it until the moment they finish their task. Preventive maintenance though helps
to keep the equipment at its rated productivity and original accuracy, yet it can
not eliminate totally the normal wear and tear of the machinery and the
occasional breakdowns. Corrective maintenance is employed to restore the
equipment back to its original performance. Corrective maintenance includes
the following activities:
A. Servicing and overhauls: To get trouble free service from equipment,
it is always necessary to carry out certain periodic activities such as servicing
and overhauls. The frequency of such maintenance activities should be
predetermined so that the work can be scheduled in advance to fit into the idle
period of the equipment. Such an approach has a number of distinct
advantages:
The presence of servicing overhauls in the firm enables it to prepare the
requirement of replacement spares well in advance which enables
purchase department to procure them at competitive rates.
Periodic overhauls and servicing lengthen the useful life of the equipment
and its parts.
The equipment can be attended without disturbing the production
programme since overhauls and replacement are planned well in
advance and the equipment is withdrawn from the production line in
consultation with the production personnel.

B. Rebuilding / Reconditioning: Reconditioning is the process of

withdrawing the equipment from the production line, dismantling it unit-
wise, visualizing defects, effecting adjustments, replacing worn-out parts
and finally building it up to get desired accuracies. Reconditioning helps
the firm to:
Eliminate problem, frequent breakdown.
Increase the life of the components
Plan the requirement of the replacement spares.
C. Design modifications and improvements: Design modifications and
improvements in a equipment are carried out either with a view to eliminate
the need for maintenance and to reduce breakdown frequency (called
design-out maintenance) or reduce time and efforts required in carrying
out maintenance work (called design-in-maintenance)
D. Planned maintenance of worn-out parts: Replacement of worn-out
parts (e.g. gears, shafts, wedges, worms and work wheels etc.) is an
important activity of corrective maintenance. Replacement of worn-out
parts should be planned in a manner that reduces the down time of the
machine. This can be done by synchronizing the activity of replacement of
parts with the natural gaps such a weekly holidays, idle period of the
machines due to non-availability of work etc.
E. Emergency repairs: Emergency repairs are the maintenance necessary
to be undertaken immediately to avoid serious consequences of loss of
production, extensive damage to equipment or to correct unsafe
conditions.
F. Breakdown maintenance: Breakdown maintenance is the maintenance
work carried out after the equipment has failed which may include

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replacement of worn-out parts also.

In the corrective environment the system has been conceived to reduce the
breakdown detection and diagnosis times and supply the adequate
information required to perform the repairing operations.
Planned corrective maintenance mostly include planned major repairs and
overhauls. Since equipment during these maintenance activities is essentially
stopped, such maintenance aptly is referred as “Shutdown maintenance”.

Activity D: List the types of corrective maintenance

10.4 Unplanned maintenance

Since in spite of elaborate planned maintenance system, chance equipment

failures can still occur, the firm will always have some unplanned maintenance
work. Unplanned maintenance thus is the maintenance work performed which
is not conceived in advance. Unplanned maintenance can be categorized as
(i) Emergency maintenance and (ii) Breakdown maintenance.
Although emergency maintenance and breakdown maintenance are used
synonymously (perhaps because both relate to equipment failure and down
time which is not foreseen) yet in some respect they differ from each other.
Emergency maintenance is truely an unplanned maintenance as the
equipment failure is not foreseen nor resources required to fix these
unforeseen failures are planned. Breakdown maintenance, on the other hand,
may partly be planned as failures can be considered in advance though timing
of the failure may not be known (provision can be made by planning other
resources such as tools, spares and replacements).
In case, the resources for breakdown are not considered and planned, then
breakdown maintenance is to be treated as unplanned maintenance. And if
resources have been provided for, the breakdown maintenance may be
trusted as planned maintenance. In this text, we have considered breakdown
maintenance as a unplanned maintenance.

I. Predictive maintenance
Predictive maintenance (PdM) techniques help determine the condition of in-
service equipment in order to predict when maintenance should be performed.
This approach offers cost savings over routine or time-based preventive
maintenance because tasks are performed only when warranted.
PdM or condition based maintenance attempts to evaluate the condition of
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equipment by performing periodic or continuous (on-line) equipment

monitoring. The ultimate goal of PdM is to perform maintenance at a scheduled
point in time when the maintenance activity is most cost effective and before
the equipment fails. This is in contrast to time and/or operation count based
maintenance where a piece of equipment gets maintained whether it needs it
or not. Time based maintenance is labor intensive, ineffective in identifying
problems that develop between scheduled inspections and is not cost
effective.

The "predictive" component of the term Predictive Maintenance stems from

the goal of predicting the future trend of the equipment's condition. This
approach uses principles of statistical process control to determine at what
point in the future maintenance activities will be appropriate.
Most PdM inspections are performed while equipment is in service, thereby
minimizing disruption of normal system operations. Adoption of PdM in the
maintenance of equipment can result in substantial cost savings and higher
system reliability.
Reliability centered maintenance or RCM emphasizes the use of predictive
maintenance (PdM) techniques in addition to traditional preventive measures.
In order prepare adequate predictive maintenance program, some special
sensor devices are connected to the machines to detect changes in the
different parameters values related with the normal operation of the machines.
Signals generated by the sensors are sent to the computer through the PLC,
and when some of those values is out of the control limits, the computer
calculates the number of hours expected for the machine to perform properly,
before the predicted breakdown.
Such information allows maintenance people to program in advance the right
moment to stop the machine and made all the amendments needed, without
interruption of the production activity.

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Term Definition

Autonomous Maintenance that is performed by the machine operator rather

maintenance than the maintenance staff. Autonomous maintenance includes
tasks such as lubricating and tightening machine parts.

Availability The percentage of time a machine is actually able to produce

parts out of the total time that it should be able to produce. This
number includes breakdowns, setups, and adjustments.

Basic condition The expected good state of repair that equipment should possess
in order to produce quality parts in a timely manner. Under TPM,
operators are expected to maintain their machine's basic
condition.

Breakdown Maintenance performed on broken machines to restore them to

maintenance working order.

Downtime The period of time when a machine or a factory is not operating

and is not producing.

Five S A targeted list of activities that promotes organization and

efficiency within a workspace. The Five S terms are sifting,
sorting, sweeping, standardizing, and sustaining.

Maintenance The necessary and basic support and repair of machines.

Maintenance includes tasks such as lubricating, adjusting, and
replacing parts.

Maintenance Machine engineering and design that is based on preventing the

prevention need for maintenance or for ease of access to machine parts so
that maintenance may be carried out easily.

Office TPM Application of the principles of total productive maintenance to

the administrative areas of the company.

Overall equipment OEE. The percentage of equipment's availability, quality, and

effectiveness performance multiplied together.

Performance rate The rate parts are produced divided by the machine capacity.
This number includes the number of parts produced in a given
time, reduced speeds, idling, and short-term stoppage for jams
and other problems.

Periodic Maintenance performed on a calendar basis.

maintenance

planned Maintenance that is performed purposely and regularly in order to

maintenance prevent a machine from deteriorating or breaking down.

predictive Maintenance performed based on the known and expected

Failure rate is the frequency with which an engineered system or component
fails, expressed for example in failures per hour. It is often denoted by the
Greek letter λ (lambda) and is important in reliability theory. In practice, the
reciprocal rate MTBF is more commonly expressed and used for high quality
components or systems.
Failure rate is usually time dependent, and an intuitive corollary is that both
rates change over time versus the expected life cycle of a system. For
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example, as an automobile grows older, the failure rate in its fifth year of
service may be many times greater than its failure rate during its first year of
service—one simply does not expect to replace an exhaust pipe, overhaul the
brakes, or have major power plant-transmission problems in a new vehicle. So
in the special case when the likelihood of failure remains constant with respect
to time (for example, in some product like a brick or protected steel beam),
failure rate is simply the inverse of the mean time between failure (MTBF),
expressed for example in hours per failure. MTBF is an important specification
parameter in all aspects of high importance engineering design— such as
naval architecture, aerospace engineering, automotive design, etc. —in short,
any task where failure in a key part or of the whole of a system needs be
minimized and severely curtailed, particularly where lives might be lost if such
factors are not taken into account. These factors account for many safety and
maintenance practices in engineering and industry practices and government
regulations, such as how often certain inspections and overhauls are required
on an aircraft. A similar ratio used in the transport industries, especially in
railways and trucking is 'Mean Distance Between Failure', a variation which
attempts to correlate actual loaded distances to similar reliability needs and
practices. Failure rates and their projective manifestations are important
factors in insurance, business, and regulation practices as well as
fundamental to design of safe systems throughout a national or international
economy.

Mean time between failures (MTBF) is the mean (average) time between
failures of a system, and is often attributed to the "useful life" of the device i.e.
not including 'infant mortality' or 'end of life' if the device is not repairable.
Calculations of MTBF assume that a system is "renewed", i.e. fixed, after each
failure, and then returned to service immediately after failure. The average
time between failing and being returned to service is termed mean

down time (MDT) or mean time to repair (MTTR).

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 - uptime) is the amount of time it was operating between these two
events.
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Mathematically, the MTBF is the sum of the MTTF (mean time to failure) and
MTTR (mean time to repair). The MTTF is simply the reciprocal of the failure
rate,
In organizational management, mean down time (MDT) is the average time
that a system is non-operational. This includes all time associated with repair,
corrective and preventive maintenance, self imposed downtime, and any
logistics or administrative delays. The difference between MDT and MTTR
(mean time to repair) is that MDT includes any and all delays involved; MTTR
looks solely at repair time.
There are three main ways of reducing MDT:
1. Make the system repairable. If an item is repairable, it will be used for a
longer time, and the user will become more familiar with its operation. This will
decrease the MDT because the user will be able to detect abnormal operation
sooner, and the system will be repaired before the problem becomes too
serious.
2. Let the user repair the system. By designing a system to be user-
repairable, the MDT will be considerably decreased, as it will not have to be
taken out of service for long periods of time while it is being repaired by the
manufacturer (which of course includes time spent in transit to and from the
manufacturer).
3. Provide the user with a repair support system. The closer critical spare
parts are to the system, the faster it will be able to be repaired, as this
eliminates the delay involved in ordering parts from the manufacturer and
waiting to receive them. Also, the clarity of any instructions on how to repair an
item will greatly contribute to the speed at which it is repaired.
Since failure rate and MTTF are simply reciprocals, both notations are found in
the literature, depending on which notation is most convenient for the
application.
A common misconception about the MTBF is that it specifies the time (on
average) when the probability of failure equals the probabiliity of not having a
failure. This is only true for certain symmetric distributions. In many cases,
such as the (non-symmetric) exponential distribution, this is not the case. In
particular, for an exponential failure distribution, the probability that an item will
fail after an MTBF is approximately 0.63. For typical distributions with some
variance, MTBF only represents a top-level aggregate statistic, and thus is not
suitable for predicting specific time to failure, the uncertainty arising from the
variability in the time-to-failure distribution.

On commercial product descriptions, the "MTTF lifetime" is the amount of time

the product should last, assuming that it is used properly.
As of 1995, the use of MTBF in the aeronautical industry (and others) has been
called into question due to the inaccuracy of its application to real systems and

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the nature of the culture which it engenders. Many component MTBFs are
given in databases, and often these values are very inaccurate.
This has led to the negative exponential distribution being used much more
than it should have been. Some estimates say that only 40% of components
have failure rates described by this. It has also been corrupted into the notion
of an "acceptable" level of failures, which removes the desire to get to the root
cause of a problem and take measures to erase it. The British Royal Air Force
is looking at other methods to describe reliability, such as maintenance-free
operating period (MFOP)

II. Failure mode and effects analysis

(FMEA) is a procedure for analysis of potential failure modes within a system
for the classification by severity or determination of the failure's effect upon the
system. It is widely used in the manufacturing industries in various phases of
the product life cycle. Failure causes are any errors or defects in process,
design, or item especially ones that affect the customer, and can be potential or
actual. Effects analysis refers to studying the consequences of those failures.
Basic terms
Failure mode: "The manner by which a failure is observed; it generally
describes the way the failure occurs."
Failure effect: The immediate consequences a failure has on the operation,
function or functionality, or status of some item
Local effect: The Failure effect as it applies to the item under analysis.
Next higher level effect: The Failure effect as it applies at the next higher
indenture level.
End effect: The failure effect at the highest indenture level or total system.
Failure cause: Defects in design, process, quality, or part application, which
are the underlying cause of the failure or which initiate a process which leads to
failure.
Severity: "The consequences of a failure mode. Severity considers the worst
potential consequence of a failure, determined by the degree of injury, property
damage, or system damage that could ultimately occur.”

Indenture levels: An identifier for item complexity. Complexity increases as the

levels get closer to one.
The FMEA process was originally developed by the US military in 1949 to
classify failures "according to their impact on mission success and
personnel/equipment safety". FMEA has since been used on the 1960s Apollo
space missions. In the 1980s it was used by the Ford Motor Company to
reduce risks after one model of car, the Pinto, suffered a design flaw that failed
to prevent the fuel tank from rupturing in a crash, leading to the possibility of the
vehicle catching fire.
Implementation
In FMEA, Failures are prioritized according to how serious their consequences
are, how frequently they occur and how easily they can be detected. A FMEA
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also documents current knowledge and actions about the risks of failures, for
use in continuous improvement. FMEA is used during the design stage with an
aim to avoid future failures. Later it is used for process control, before and
during ongoing operation of the process. Ideally, FMEA begins during the
earliest conceptual stages of design and continues throughout the life of the
product or service.
The purpose of the FMEA is to take actions to eliminate or reduce failures,
starting with the highest-priority ones. It may be used to evaluate risk
management priorities for mitigating known threat-vulnerabilities. FMEA helps
select remedial actions that reduce cumulative impacts of life-cycle
consequences (risks) from a systems failure (fault).

It is used in many formal quality systems such as QS-9000 or ISO/TS 16949.

The basic process is to take a description of the parts of a system, and list the
consequences if each part fails. In most formal systems, the consequences
are then evaluated by three criteria and associated risk indices:
Severity (S),
Likelihood of occurrence (O), and (Note: This is also often known as
probability (P))
Inability of controls to detect it (D)

An FMEA simple scheme would be to have three indices rated from 1 (lowest
risk) to 10 (highest risk). The overall risk of each failure would then be called
Risk Priority Number (RPN) and equal to the product of Severity (S),
Occurrence (O), and Detection (D), or RPN = SxOxD. It should be noted that
for the Detection index, a rating of 1 means the control is absolutely certain to
detect the failure and a rating of 10 means the control is certain not to detect the
problem (or no control exists). The RPN (ranging from 1 to 1000) is used to
prioritize all potential failures to decide upon actions leading to reduce the risk,
usually by reducing likelihood of occurrence and improving controls for
detecting the failure.

Disadvantages
If used as a top-down tool, FMEA may only identify major failure modes in a
system. Fault tree analysis (FTA) is better suited for "top-down" analysis.
When used as a "bottom-up" tool FMEA can augment or complement FTA and
identify many more causes and failure modes resulting in top-level symptoms.
It is not able to discover complex failure modes involving multiple failures
within a subsystem, or to report expected failure intervals of particular failure
modes up to the upper level subsystem or system.
Additionally, the multiplication of the severity, occurrence and detection
rankings may result in rank reversals, where a less serious failure mode
receives a higher RPN than a more serious failure mode. The reason for this is
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that the rankings are ordinal scale numbers, and multiplication is not a valid
operation on them. The ordinal rankings only say that one ranking is better or
worse than another, but not by how much. For instance, a ranking of "2" may
not be twice as bad as a ranking of "1," or an "8" may not be twice as bad as a
"4," but multiplication treats them as though they are.

10.5 Keywords

Autonomous maintenance: Maintenance that is performed by the machine

operator rather than the maintenance staff. Autonomous maintenance
includes tasks such as lubricating and tightening machine parts.

Breakdown maintenance: Maintenance performed on broken machines to

restore them to working order.

Downtime: The period of time when a machine or a factory is not operating

and is not producing.

Maintenance: The necessary and basic support and repair of machines.

Maintenance includes tasks such as lubricating, adjusting, and replacing
parts.

Maintenance prevention: Machine engineering and design that is based on

preventing the need for maintenance or for ease of access to machine parts so
that maintenance may be carried out easily.

Periodic maintenance: Maintenance performed on a calendar basis.

Planned maintenance: Maintenance that is performed purposely and

regularly in order to prevent a machine from deteriorating or breaking down.

Predictive maintenance: Maintenance performed based on the known

and expected behavior, condition, and history of the machine.

Preventive maintenance: Maintenance performed while a machine is

still in working order to keep it from breaking down. Preventive maintenance
includes lubricating, tightening, and replacing worn parts.

MTBF: Mean time between failures (MTBF) is the mean (average) time
between failures of a system, and is often attributed to the "useful life" of the
device.

Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA): FMEA is a procedure for

analysis of potential failure modes within a system for the classification by
severity or determination of the failure's effect upon the system

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10.6 Summary

Today's plants are regarded as high technology plants which are bigger in
capacity, involve high speed machinery, complex and precise designs, more
automation and therefore pose difficulties in maintenance. Due to large
investment, down time cost of these plants is enormous. Since machinery and
its arrangement is engineered for continuous production, stoppage /
malfunctioning / breakdown of a single machine can cause stoppage of the
whole plant.
Each equipment and its different systems (parts and components) are
subjected to stresses and physical exhaustion which cause their wear and
tear. Temperature changes, vibrations, friction between the mating parts,
corrosion etc. are but to name few which cause deterioration and create a gap
between the performance of the system in use and performance obtainable
from it. Some sort of action is necessary to (i) keep rate of wear and tear at its
minimum and (ii) restore the equipment back to acceptable level when the gap
in performance increases beyond acceptable limit. Such actions/activities are
termed as maintenance.
The breakdown of machine may occur due to design/manufacturing defects,
Excessive friction between the parts, Failure to replace parts that are known to
wear, Neglected cooling system, neglected common minor faults, overloading
of machines, wrong fuel, obstruction of air intakes, Installation deficiencies or
improper handling of the machine by the operators.
Unplanned and unexpected stoppage of a machine can result in huge losses
in the form of Down time cost, Idle wages, Loss of materials, repair charges,
loss of sale customer and goodwill, Expediting cost, Accident cost, Tool
breakage, wage cost.
A Good Maintenance System results in Ensuring maximum plant availability by
preventing unexpected breakdowns and by reducing shutdown periods.
Maintenance is of two types: Planned maintenance and Unplanned
maintenance. Planned maintenance can be divided into preventive
maintenance and corrective maintenance.
Preventive maintenance anticipates failures and adopts necessary actions to
check failures before they occur. Proper preventive maintenance can help us
avoid unplanned maintenance. Even if the firm has adopted preventive
maintenance, some corrective maintenance work is required, to rectify
malfunction due to chance failure of the parts, to rehabilitate /recondition of the
equipment, to replace major parts which have worn out, To improve reliability
and maintainability of the equipment by making changes in design, materials
Mean time between failures (MTBF) is the mean (average) time between
failures of a system, and is often attributed to the "useful life" of the. The
average time between failing and being returned to service is termed mean
down time (MDT) or mean time to repair (MTTR). MDT can be reduced by

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making the system easily repairable, by letting the user repair the system, by
providing the user with a repair support system.

Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is a procedure for analysis of

potential failure modes within a system for the classification by severity or
determination of the failure's effect upon the system. In FMEA, Failures are
prioritized according to how serious their consequences are, how frequently
they occur and how easily they can be detected. The purpose of the FMEA is to
take actions to eliminate or reduce failures, starting with the highest-priority
ones.

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