The New Challenges of Maintenance   The following article is excerpted from the book "Reliability-Centered Maintenance" by John Moubray. For those interested in reading the whole story, the book can be purchased online at www.chapters.ca.   The Changing World of Maintenance Over the past twenty years, maintenance has changed, perhaps more so than any other management discipline. The changes are due to a huge increase in the number and variety of physical assets (plant, equipment and buildings) which must be maintained throughout the world, more complex designs, new maintenance techniques and changing views on maintenance organization and responsibilities.   Downtime Downtime has always affected the productive capability of physical assets by reducing output, increasing operating costs and interfering with customer service. In manufacturing, the effects of downtime are being aggravated by the worldwide move towards just-in-time systems, where reduced stocks of work-in-progress mean that quite small breakdowns are now much more likely to stop a whole plant.   Automation Greater automation means that more failures affect our ability to sustain satisfactory quality standards. This applies as much to standards of service as it does to product quality. Equipment failures can affect climate control in buildings and the punctuality of transport networks as much as they can interfere with the consistent achievement of specified tolerances in manufacturing.   Safety and the environment More and more failures have serious safety or environmental consequences, at a time when standards in these areas are rising rapidly. This adds an order of magnitude to our dependence on the integrity of our physical assets - one which goes beyond cost and which becomes a simple matter of organizational survival. Higher costs At the same time as our dependence on physical assets is growing, so too is their cost - to operate and to own. To secure the maximum return on the investment which they represent, they must be kept working efficiently for as long as we want them to. Finally, the cost of maintenance itself is still rising, in absolute terms and as a proportion of total expenditure. In some industries, it is now the second highest or even the highest element of operating costs.   New techniques There has been explosive growth in new maintenance concepts and techniques. Hundreds have been developed over the past fifteen years, and more are emerging every week. The new developments include: • decision support tools, such as hazard studies, failure modes and effects analysis and expert systems • new maintenance techniques • designing equipment with a much greater emphasis on reliability and maintainability • a major shift in organizational thinking towards participation, team-working and flexibility.   The new challenge facing maintenance people In a nutshell, the key challenges facing modern maintenance managers can be summarized as follows: To select the most appropriate techniques to deal with each type of failure process in order to fulfill all the expectations of the owners of the assets, the users of the assets and of society as a whole in the most cost-effective and enduring fashion with the active support and co-operation of all the people involved. If these requirements are defined correctly in the light of modem thinking, it is possible to achieve quite remarkable step changes in maintenance efficiency and effectiveness.   back to PilotLight online