TABLE OF CONTENTS Ever since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, maintaining engineering equipment in the field has always been a challenging issue. Today, this problem has become even more pressing because of factors such as the amount of equipment used in the industrial sector, the expected cost effectiveness, and the increase in equipment sophistication, mechanization, and automation. For example, in the U.S. industrial sector alone, the amount of equipment used is so large that over $300 billion are spent on plant maintenance and operations each year [1].
It means that maintenance management is a very crucial factor in industrial output and even a small improvement in the effectiveness of maintenance effort can result in billions of dollars in savings. For example, a study conducted in the United Kingdom in 1968 indicated that better maintenance practices could have saved approximately 300 million annually of lost production alone due to equipment unavailability [2].
Needless to say, the importance of the maintenance function has increased more than ever before, and good management is the key to its effectiveness. This chapter presents some important aspects directly or indirectly concerned with maintenance management.
This section presents terms and definitions directly or indirectly related to maintenance management [3 6].
Maintenance. This is all actions necessary to retain an item in, or restoring it to, a specified state.
Capital maintenance. This is expenditures for the purchase and expansion of plant assets, and it usually includes the installation cost.
Maintenance engineering.
