TABLE OF CONTENTS This chapter covers a hybrid technique that blends statistical techniques specific to equipment maintenance with financial methodologies, thereby allowing for the most cost-effective solutions to be derived for a company's asset management policies. The concepts are based on quantifying maintainability and reliability calculations in financial terms. Some of the decision areas in which this technique can be applied are:
Setting preventive maintenance inspection schedules
Age replacement policies
Preventive maintenance block replacement policies
Capital equipment replacement policies
Equipment overhaul policies
Critical spares stocking levels
Routine spares stocking levels
The first five decision areas are related to maintenance policies and schedules. Even a company that has followed the evolution of maintenance improvement is still making these decisions intuitively, sometimes supplemented by some RCM data. However, are the decisions being made based on the financial impact they have on the total company? Not likely, because the reliability principles have not been financially considered in the RCM process. Although the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) may be known from an RCM analysis, the following questions are still unanswered:
What is the cost to prevent the failure? (preventive maintenance labor and materials)
What is the cost when equipment fails? (repair costs and lost production costs)
What is the correct number of spare parts to keep in stock to insure part availability when required? (the holding costs, storage costs, stores labor costs, compared to the downtime costs for the stock out)
For the routine spare parts need for the service, what is the reorder level...
