Foundation 13: Reliability and Maintenance

Having established the selection and procurement of the appropriate infrastructure facilities for both the present requirements and longer-term competitive advantage, it is equally important to ensure dependability and reliability. If the plant is not reliable, in either availability or performance, companies must build up stocks or install excess capacity, thereby leading to poor capital utilization. Although the function of ensuring reliable manufacturing has been given different names to induce a higher profile (e.g. assets care, reliability engineering, etc.) it is best known as maintenance.

A maintenance strategy, for manufacturing and service industries, should cover three levels of action such as maintenance avoidance (longer term), maintenance reduction (medium term) and maintenance improvement (current or short term). Maintenance avoidance relates to longer-term right first time measures at the selection and procurement stage of a capital project so that appropriate specifications and project management can ensure capital plant which is intrinsically reliable with associated low maintenance costs. Maintenance reduction relates to medium-term measures of existing equipment by continuous modifications of plant to eliminate weak points. Maintenance improvement relates to the policy, planning and control of the current maintenance activities.