DEFINITION

 WHAT IS MEANT BY THE TERM “MAINTENANCE” ?

 Maintenance encompasses all those activities that maintain facilities & equipment
in good working order so that a system can perform as intended.
 Maintenance can also be termed as asset management system which keeps them
in optimum operating condition.

PLANT
To make PRODUCT, PLANT of some kind is needed. This will comprise the bulk of the
fixed assets of the business. In determining which PLANT to use, management must
consider areas such as:
- Future demand (volume, timing)
- Design and layout of factory, equipment, offices
- Productivity and reliability of equipment
- Need for (and costs of) maintenance
- Heath and safety (particularly the operation of equipment)
- Environmental issues (e.g. creation of waste products)

PROCESSES
There are many different ways of producing a product. Management must choose
the best process, or series of processes. They will consider:
- Available capacity
- Available skills
- Type of production
- Layout of plant and equipment
- Safety
- Production costs
- Maintenance requirements

Definition of Maintenance Management

According to Webster’s Dictionary, management characterises the process of leading and
directing all or part of an organization, often a business one, through the deployment and
manipulation of resources (human, financial, material, intellectual or intangible). One can
also think of management functionally as the action of measuring a quantity on a regular
basis and adjusting an initial plan and the actions taken to reach one's intended goal. This
applies even in situations where planning does not take place. Situational management
may precede and subsume purposive management.
Maintenance management will therefore characterise the process of leading and directing
the maintenance organization. Before describing this process, let us make sure that we
understand what a maintenance organization, with the resources belonging to it, is
pursuing.
Maintenance is defined as the combination of all technical, administrative and managerial
actions during the life cycle of an item intended to retain it in, or restore it to, a state in
which it can perform the required function (function or a combination of functions of an
item which are considered necessary to provide a given service).
This definition clarifies the objective of maintenance and can help us to understand what
part of an organization is, somehow, devoted to maintenance.

Now we can define maintenance management as follows :

“All the activities of the management that determine the maintenance objectives or
priorities (defined as targets assigned and accepted by the management and maintenance
department), strategies (defined as a management method in order to achieve
maintenance objectives), and responsibilities and implement them by means such as
maintenance planning, maintenance control and supervision, and several improving
methods including economical aspects in the organization.”

The Maintenance Management Framework

This definition of maintenance management is closely aligned to other such
notions found in modern maintenance literature . Further definitions
consider maintenance management as the management of all assets owned by a
company, based on maximizing the return on investment in the asset .
Another approach indicates how a maintenance system can be seen as a
simple input-output system. The inputs are the manpower, management, tools,
equipment, etc., and the output is the equipment configured well and working
reliably to reach the planned plant operation. They show that the required
activities for this system to be functional are maintenance planning (philosophy,
maintenance workload forecast, capacity, and scheduling), maintenance
organization (work design, standards, work measurement, and project
administration) and maintenance control (of works, materials, inventories, costs,
and quality oriented management).
In this work we will follow the above-mentioned maintenance management
definition established in the European standards for maintenance terminology
and we will review the main aspects of that definition, i.e.:
The determination of maintenance objectives or priorities;
The determination of strategies (and responsibilities);
Their implementation by means such as maintenance planning,
maintenance control and supervision, and;
Improving methods including economical aspects in the organization.
We will show how, in order to manage maintenance effectively and efficiently,
we can summarize these four points by clearly understanding the following two:
The maintenance management process, the course of action and the
series of stages or steps to follow and;
The maintenance management framework the essential supporting
structure and the basic system needed to manage maintenance.
Effectiveness and Efficiency of Maintenance Management
The maintenance management process can be divided into two parts: the
definition of the strategy, and the strategy implementation.
The first part, definition of the maintenance strategy, requires the definition
of the maintenance objectives as an input, which will be derived directly from
the business plan. This initial part of the maintenance management process
conditions the success of maintenance in an organization, and determines the
effectiveness of the subsequent implementation of the maintenance plans,
schedules, controls and improvements. However, this very important point is
sometimes forgotten. The ability to deal with this problem, reaching an effective
maintenance strategy, shows our ability to foresee the correct maintenance
requirements over time, our ability to anticipate these requirements in
congruence with the production requirements. This will allow us to arrive at a
position where we will be able to minimize the maintenance indirect costs ,
those costs associated with production losses, and ultimately, with customer
dissatisfaction. Clearly effectiveness emphasizes how well a department or function
meets its goals or company needs, and is often discussed in terms of the quality of the
service provided, viewed from the customer’s perspective.
In the case of maintenance, effectiveness can represent the overall company
satisfaction with the capacity and condition of its assets , or the reduction of
the overall company cost obtained because production capacity is available
when needed . Effectiveness concentrates then on the correctness of the
process and whether the process produces the required result.
The second part of the process, the implementation of the selected strategy
has a different significance level. Our ability to deal with the maintenance
management implementation problem (for instance, our ability to ensure proper
skill levels, proper work preparation, suitable tools and schedule fulfilment),
will allow us to minimize the maintenance direct cost (labour and other
maintenance required resources). In this part of the process we deal with the
efficiency of our management, which should be less important. Efficiency is
acting or producing with minimum waste, expense, or unnecessary effort.
Efficiency compares the quantity of service provided to the resource expended.
It measures how well the task is being performed, not whether the task itself is
correct. Efficiency is then understood as providing the same or better
maintenance for the same cost.
It is curious, however, that most of the research done within the area of
maintenance management is mainly devoted to improving the implementation
part of the management process (planning, scheduling, controlling and
improving), while it seems that less effort has been spent studying the process of
reaching an effective maintenance strategy. That’s why frequently we find
ourselves doing “the wrong thing right” in our maintenance organizations. In the
following section we will pay special attention to this issue.
 Maintenance Objectives, Strategy and Responsibilities
Setting Maintenance Objectives
Business objectives take into consideration what the needs and wants of the
customers, shareholders, and other stakeholders are [3]. These general business
objectives can be grouped [9] into four groups: profitability, growth, risk and
social objectives. Let us review each one of these aspects and see how they
relate to maintenance:
Profitability is, as a general rule, a priority. It is the necessary condition
that allows us, in the long run, to reach the other objectives.
Maintenance therefore should clearly contribute to the profitability and
the competitiveness of the business, or to the effectiveness of the
administration and public services;
Growth can be important at different moments of the product life cycle,
for instance, in high-growth markets gaining share is easier and more
valuable, it reduces pressure on price, it ensures access to technology, it
deters subsequent entrants in the market, etc.;
People, environment and asset safety is another priority in current
businesses. Although laws and regulations establish a certain framework
for safety, risk may always show up as a consequence of new equipment
installation, interdependence of new and existing equipment, etc.;
Many companies claim that they have social objectives to fulfil. They
actively want to contribute to the discussion of socially relevant issues
by engaging in dialogue with interested sections of society.
Achieving these business objectives requires a business strategy. Said strategy,
in conjunction with the current asset environment, helps us to translate business
objectives into maintenance objectives. When doing so, it is normal to find
typical goals for maintenance management in many organizations , goals
that can be generally classified into three groups:
Technical objectives. These depend on the business sector operational
imperatives. In general, operational imperatives are linked to a
satisfactory level of equipment availability and people safety. A
generally accepted method to measure the fulfilment of this goal is the
Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), as described in TPM method
;
Legal objectives/Mandatory regulations. Normally it is a maintenance
objective to fulfil all these existing regulations for electrical devices,
pressure equipment, vehicles, protection means, etc.;
Financial objectives: to satisfy the technical objective at the minimum
cost. From a long term perspective global equipment life cycle cost
should be a suitable measure for this.
Achieving each objective will probably have a different level of outcome. It is
therefore desirable to evaluate the different maintenance goals, to make sure that
those goals are realistic, in accordance with the current asset situation, and then
start planning for strategies to achieve those goals.
It is extremely important at this time to see what “other people are doing”, to
review sector best practices. This will help us to set up realistic goals, or to test
potential strategies.
We cannot forget that maintenance objectives are targets assigned and
accepted by the management and maintenance department. The process of
assigning targets is critical, typically recursive, and often a time consuming
process.

Formulating Strategy
The strategy setting process may follow standard organizational planning methods:
Deriving from corporate goals the policies and objectives for maintenance. These
objectives may include: equipment availability, reliability, safety, risk, maintenance
budget, etc., and should be communicated to all personnel involved in maintenance,
including external parties;
Determination of current factory/facilities performance;
Determination of the target performance measures (Key Performance Indicators —
KPIs). Improvements will be made based on accepted business, user and maintenance
management performance indicators;
Establishing principles to guide strategy implementation by means of
planning, execution, assessment, analysis and improvement of
maintenance.
Asset
Environment
Business
Strategy
Global Objectives
for Maintenance
Guiding Principles
Strategy
Implementation
Vision
Mission
KPIs Targets
Asset
Environment
Business
Strategy
PerformanceGap
Current Status

Establishing Responsibilities
The adopted maintenance strategy will lead to the determination of different maintenance
management responsibilities at different activity levels. These responsibilities will be
held by different participants that will play different management roles in each specific
scenario. As the participant we normally
find: the equipment manufacturer, the equipment vendor, the buyer of the
equipment (who normally uses it and becomes “the user” of the equipment) and
third/external parties providing any type of maintenance service. Typical
scenario examples are as follows:
A first example is the scenario in which the equipment manufacturer is required to
provide complete maintenance and maintenance support services as an integrated
component of the delivery of the product.
These services are either provided on a contractual basis or accessed as needed by the
user. In these cases, once this outsourcing strategy is in place and the contract with the
equipment manufacturer (or representative) is signed, the primary responsibility remains
with the manufacturer (or a vendor or other outsourced support organization contacted by
the manufacturer). The user of the equipment primarily depends upon this network to be
supplied with total support services during the operation and maintenance phase of the
equipment. The maintenance management is mainly held by the maintenance provider
(the manufacturer or contacted organization under his responsibility)
And the maintenance management system at user level is reduced to what is more or less
an administrative chain to connect its organization with the provider;

Strategy Implementation at the Three Levels of Activity:

Strategic, Tactical and Operational
Maintenance management must align actions at three levels of business
activities —strategic, tactical, and operational.
Actions at the strategic level will transform business priorities into maintenance
priorities. To meet these priorities, this process will help craft midto-
long term strategies to address current and/or potential gaps in equipment
maintenance performance. As a result, a generic maintenance plan will be
obtained at this level.
Transformation of business priorities into maintenance priorities is done by
establishing critical targets in current operations. Detailed analysis creates
measured items such as the incidence of the plant equipment breakdowns as
these would impact the plant’s operational targets (for instance, by using
criticality analysis). Maintenance management would then develop a course of
strategic actions to address specific issues for the critical items. Other actions
would focus on the acquisition of the requisite skills and technologies (for
example, condition monitoring technologies) for the micro-level improvement
of maintenance effectiveness and efficiency.
Actions at the tactical level would determine the correct assignment of
maintenance resources (skills, materials, test equipment, etc.) to fulfil the
maintenance plan. As a result, a detailed program would materialize with all the
tasks specified and the resources assigned. Moreover, during the process of
detailed maintenance requirements planning and scheduling, this level of
activity must develop a level of competence to discriminate among a variety of
resource options (of different values) that may be assigned to execute a
maintenance task at a certain asset (say a particular machine), location and time.
Such action would spell out the tactical maintenance policies.
Actions at the operational level would ensure that the maintenance tasks are
carried out by skilled technicians, in the time scheduled, following the correct
procedures, and using the proper tools. As a result, work would be done and
data would be recorded in the information system. Procedures at the operational
level would be needed for preventive works, equipment repairs, and
troubleshooting with a high degree of attention. Note that the diagnosis of the
reasons for a system’s failure has become a critical function. This task often
engages specialists and uses complex technological systems. Therefore, it is
reasonable to expect that the troubleshooting process would rely heavily on the
maintenance information systems that provide information about all the work
done on each piece of equipment.
Finally, by capturing collective management experience at the three levels,
and adapting best practices from within and outside the maintenance
Organization, we will be able to arrive at a maintenance management system that
is continuously improved, and that automatically adapts to new and changing
Organization targets.