Ejsr 29 1 14

European Journal of Scientific Research
ISSN 1450-216X Vol.29 No.1 (2009), pp.126-135

© EuroJournals Publishing, Inc. 2009
http://www.eurojournals.com/ejsr.htm
A Study on Implementation of Preventive Maintenance

Programme at Malaysia Palm Oil Mill
A.R. Ismail
Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM Bangi Selangor, MALAYSIA
E-mail: arasdan@gmail.com
R. Ismail
R. Zulkifli
N. K. Makhtar
B. M. Deros
Abstract
The objective of this paper is to study on the effects of Preventive Maintenance

Programme (PMP) implementation at a palm oil mill in Malaysia. There are many
processes involved in extracting oil from the oil palm fruits bunches. The major processes,
includes the oil palm fruits reception and grading, sterilization, thresher, digestion,
pressing, clarification and kernel production. There are several important factors that need
to be considered in PMP implementation at a palm oil mill. These factors comprise of the
organization of preventive maintenance programme, scheduling, inspections and
frequencies of the maintenance work. The study had shown that by implementing PMP the
palm oil mill was able provide higher machineries availability and lower machineries
failure rate. This paper had used the mathematical analysis to evaluate the availability of
machine in the palm oil mill. Lastly, the author had proposed some suggestions on how to
improve the effectiveness of the existing PMP at the palm oil mill.
Keywords: Preventive Maintenance Programme (PMP), Reliability, Failure Rate, Mean

Time between Failure (MTBF), Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)
A Study on Implementation of Preventive Maintenance Programme at Malaysia Palm Oil Mill 127
1. Introduction
The replacement, repair or maintenance of a machine as it deteriorates over time has been studied in
many contexts [1]. It is commonly agreed nowadays that preventive maintenance programme can be
very successful in improving equipment reliability while minimizing maintenance-related costs [2].
Preventive maintenance (PM) consists of actions that improve the condition of system elements before
they fail [3]. Preventive maintenance is an action involving inspection, servicing, repairing or replacing
physical components of machineries, plant and equipment by following the prescribed schedule. The
PM activity does not affect the state of the element but ensures that the element is in operating
condition. In this case the element remains ‘as bad as old.’ [3].The main purpose of PMP is to reduce
physical components from being damaged during normal operations and cause unplanned maintenance
activity. This is very important in order to achieve more efficient and economical plant and equipment
operation. According to Worsham (2005), preventive maintenance is a planned maintenance activity of
plant and equipment that is designed to improve machine life and avoid any unplanned maintenance
activity [4].
There are a few study conducted in the PMP area. Lee and Rosenblatt study the case where
preventive maintenance is performed on a deteriorating machine after the machines produces the
economical manufacturing quantity [5]. Preventive maintenance is carried out to determine the plant
and machine availability and reliability. Machine availability means the ability of the machine to
perform its tasks at anytime whenever it is needed. On the other hand, reliability means the ability of
the machine to operate and perform well in the specified period of time [4].
According to Anderson (2003), the term preventive maintenance refers to any activity, which is
performing [6]:
(i) To predict the onset of component failure;
(ii) To detect a failure before it has an impact on the asset function;
(iii) To repair or replace the asset before failure occurs.
Availability is the ability of an asset to perform its function as predicted. Availability is usually
measured as the mean of time between the failures (MTBF) for each of the system [7]. The
maintenance of the centralize availability is a process which could be used to determine any physical
asset continuous functioning according to the tasks designed or assigned. The availability engineering
is concerned about the prediction and avoidance any failures effectively and at the same time including
the cost factors if failure is allowed to happen [7]. Each maintenance personnel must know and
understand the machine operations and always tries to improve the availability of the machine. In
facing technical problems, competence maintenance personnel could come out with the solution and
counter measure so that the problems would not recur. Besides that, they are also responsible to
perform the existing maintenance activities and take corrective actions to solve any existing problem
[7]. Keeping up with the scheduling has also become an important indicator to control and monitor the
maintenance activities.
The numbers of orders are divided from the total numbers of scheduled maintenance works that
must be completed in the given time frame (usually in a week). Normally, in most of the time, the
results are quantified to be less than 100 percent.
The performance of maintenance schedule could also be defined as the percentage of the actual
machine usage capacity or the capacity of the machine to produce items over a year. The work
improvement schedule is a maintenance activity to repair certain component without taking into
account the condition of the machine. The frequency of the maintenance activity is determined by the
total time of the component [7].
2. Research Method
In performing any study, proper planning is very important because it could facilitate smooth execution
of all the necessary steps to complete the study in time and able to achieve the objectives of the study.
During this study, the following steps are performed: first, define the research objectives; second, write
128 A.R. Ismail, R. Ismail, R. Zulkifli, N. K. Makhtar and B. M. Deros
the problem statement for the study; third, conduct the literature review; fourth, develop a set of
questionnaire for conducting interviews to collect the necessary information and data; fifth, perform
the data analysis; and sixth, conclude the study by drawing the conclusions and provide some
suggestions and recommendations for the company management to implement in order to improve
their machine and plant availability and reliability. The study was conducted at one of the biggest palm
oil mill in Kulai, Johor, Malaysia reknown as AKOM.
3. Results
Referring to Table 1 the data collected from the study showed the number of machineries failures,
which had occurred on the palm oil mill’s production machineries beginning from the year 2000 to
2005 at AKOM plant. Meanwhile, Table 2 showed the data on breakdown time in hours of the palm oil
mill machineries failures for the past five years. The type of machineries failures can be categorized
into 3 main groups, namely they are electrical failures, mechanical failures and others failures. Figure 1
shows the total number of failures in hours according to the 3 main categories from the year 2000 until
2005.
Table 1: Number of Machineries Failures at AKOM
Number of Failure
Machineries
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
FFB Conveyor 1 0 1 0 2 2
Steriliser 2 5 3 2 3 2
Crane / Hoist 1 9 4 3 6 1
Thresher / Autofeeder 2 0 3 3 3 4
Press / Digester 0 0 2 0 1 1
Power Supply (Turbine) 3 1 0 1 4 1
Conveyors 0 3 5 3 3 2
Vibrating Screen 1 3 0 2 2 0
Decanter 3 0 0 0 0 0
ID Fan 0 2 2 1 0 0
Crude Oil Pumps / P. lines 0 1 2 0 3 1
Sludge Separators 0 1 0 0 0 0
Boiler 0 0 3 2 1 0
Fibre Cyclone 0 0 0 1 4 1
Water Treatment Plant 0 0 0 0 1 0
Table 2: Machineries Breakdown Time at AKOM
Breakdown time (hour)

Machineries
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
FFB Conveyor 0.42 0 0.42 0 0.5 3.58
Steriliser 2.33 6.24 8.32 5.83 3.49 3.99
Crane / Hoist 0.5 17.49 6.25 6.42 13.33 7
Thresher / Autofeeder 1.58 0 5.08 7.74 5.09 7.08
Press / Digester 0 0 1.75 0 1 0.66
Power Supply (Turbine) 3.07 0.16 0 0.67 7.16 0.75
Conveyors 0 13.08 20.17 10.08 9.26 4.08
Vibrating Screen 0.25 3.92 0 3 2.25 0
Decanter 3.5 0 0 0 0 0
ID Fan 0 3.42 2 0.5 0 0
Crude Oil Pumps / P. lines 0 0.58 0.83 0 2.5 0.32
Boiler 0 0 7.58 4.08 0.5 0
Fibre Cyclone 0 0 0 0.75 3.84 1
Water Treatment Plant 0 0 0 0 0.67 0
Meanwhile, Figure 2 shows the total number of overall time of machineries breakdown in hours
for machineries in the year 2000 until the year 2005. The failure time is the total time in hour; it was
calculated by adding the total number of hours for each machine failure that had occurred during a
period of time. The data in Figure 1 shows that AKOM has a higher machine breakdown involving the
electrical failure compare with another two categories because most of the machineries found in palm
oil mill are electrical machines. The highest numbers of electrical failures occurred in the year 2002
and the minimum was during the year 2000. In addition, Figure 1 shows there are relatively small
numbers of mechanical failures and other failures. The machineries breakdown times due to
mechanical failures are less than 12 hours during each year for the six years period.
Figure 1: Machineries Breakdown Time According to Mechanical, Electrical and Others Categories for Year
2000 to 2005
45
40.32
40
35 33.61
Machineries Breakdown (hour)
30
26.08
25
20.91
20
14.22
15
11.99 11.74
9.82
10 8.92
7.82
7 7.24
6.3 6.42 6.16
Mechanical
5 3 3.16
2.35 Electrical
others
0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Year
In general, referring to Figure 2 it can be concluded that the total machineries breakdown time
at AKOM for the past six years were inconsistent ranging from 11.65 to 52.4 hours for each year
studied. In other words, the trends of the machineries breakdown time were unpredictable from year to
year. There are many factors that may contribute towards the decreasing and increasing trend in total
time of the machineries breakdown failures. These factors are: first, the level of difficulty to perform
the maintenance activities; second, the skills of technicians or operators; and thirdly, difficulty in
finding the necessary spare parts for machinery parts replacement and repairs.
Figure 2: Total Machineries Breakdown Time for Year 2000 to 2005
60
Machineries Breakdown (hour)
52.4
50 49.59
45.89
40 39.07
30 28.46
20
11.65
10
0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Year
3.1. Mathematical Analysis on Machineries Performance at AKOM

The mathematical analysis method was used at AKOM to measure the machine performance and
evaluate their level of availability. The major machine involved in this study are Fresh Fruit Bunches
(FFB) conveyer, Sterilizer, Crane/Hoist, Thresher/Auto-feeder, Power Supply (Turbine), Conveyers,
Vibrating Screen, Decanter, ID Fan, Crude Palm Oil/Pipe Line, Sludge Separators, Boiler, Fibre
Cyclone and Water Treatment Plant. The mathematical analyses are performed to calculate the values
for availability, failure rate, mean time between failure, and mean time to repair. The respective
equations (1), (2), (3) and (4) were used to calculate the availability value (A), the failure rate (λ), the
mean between failures (MTBF) and the mean time to repair (MTTR).
Availability, A = MTBF
MTBF + MTTR (1)
Failure Rate, λ = Number of failures between maintenance
Total operating time between maintenance (hour) (2)
Mean Time Between Failure, MTBF = 1
λ (3)
Mean Time To Repair, MTTR = Total breakdown time (hours)
Number of failures (4)
Mathematical analysis was conducted to explain and quantify the palm oil mill’s machine
performance. These data were not available prior to this particular study. The availability, failure rate,
mean time between failure and mean time to repair for the 15 major machines at the palm oil mill is
shown in Table 3, Table 4, Table 5 and Table 6.
Table 3: Major Machineries Failure rate (λ) at AKOM
Failure Rate (λ)

Machineries
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
FFB Conveyor 1 0 1 0 2 2
Steriliser 2 5 3 2 3 2
Crane / Hoist 1 9 4 3 6 1
Press / Digester 0 0 2 0 1 1
Conveyors 0 3 5 3 3 2
Decanter 3 0 0 0 0 0
ID Fan 0 2 2 1 0 0
Boiler 0 0 3 2 1 0
Fibre Cyclone 0 0 0 1 4 1
Table 4: Major Machineries Mean Time between Failures (MTBF) at AKOM
MTBF
Machineries
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
FFB Conveyor 6912 0 6912 0 3456 3456
Steriliser 3456 1382.4 2304 3456 2304 3456
Crane / Hoist 6912 768 1728 2304 1152 6912
Press / Digester 0 0 3456 0 6912 6912
Conveyors 0 2304 1382.4 2304 2304 3456
Decanter 2304 0 0 0 0 0
ID Fan 0 3456 3456 6912 0 0
Boiler 0 0 2304 3456 6912 0
Fibre Cyclone 0 0 0 6912 1728 6912
Table 5: Major Machineries Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) at AKOM
MTTR
Machineries
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
FFB Conveyor 0.42 0 0.42 0 0.25 1.79
Steriliser 1.165 1.248 2.7733 2.915 1.1633 1.995
Crane / Hoist 0.5 1.9433 1.5625 2.14 2.2217 7
Press / Digester 0 0 0.875 0 1 0.66
Power Supply (Turbine) 1.0233 0.16 0 0.67 1.79 0.75
Conveyors 0 4.36 4.034 3.36 3.0867 2.04
Vibrating Screen 0.25 1.3067 0 1.5 1.125 0
Decanter 1.1667 0 0 0 0 0
ID Fan 0 1.71 1 0.5 0 0
Crude Oil Pumps / P. lines 0 0.58 0.415 0 0.8333 0.32
Boiler 0 0 2.5267 2.04 0.5 0
Fibre Cyclone 0 0 0 0.75 0.96 1
Table 6: Major Machineries Availability (A) at AKOM
Availability (A)
Machineries
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
FFB Conveyor 0.9999 1 0.9999 1 0.9999 0.9995
Steriliser 0.9997 0.9991 0.9988 0.9992 0.9995 0.9994
Crane / Hoist 0.9999 0.9975 0.9991 0.9991 0.9981 0.999
Press / Digester 1 1 0.9997 1 0.9999 0.9999
Power Supply (Turbine) 0.9996 1 1 0.9999 0.999 0.9999
Conveyors 1 0.9981 0.9971 0.9985 0.9987 0.9994
Vibrating Screen 1 0.9994 1 0.9996 0.9997 1
Decanter 0.9995 1 1 1 1 1
ID Fan 1 0.9995 0.9997 0.9999 1 1
Crude Oil Pumps / P. lines 1 0.9995 0.9999 1 0.9996 1
Sludge Separators 1 0.9999 1 1 1 1
Boiler 1 1 0.9989 0.9994 0.9999 1
Fibre Cyclone 1 1 1 0.9999 0.9994 0.9999
4. Discussions
From the mathematical analysis of the available past data of the palm oil mill, which are shown in
Table 3, 4, 5 and 6, it can be concluded that the 15 major machineries for processing the oil palm fruits
bunch to extract palm oil at AKOM are still in good condition during the period studied between year
2000 until 2005. This judgment was made based on the facts that the major critical machineries at
AKOM still have very high level availability of 99.9 to 100 percent. Nevertheless, there is some
critical machinery that possessed a slightly lower level of availability value from 99.71 to 99.89
percent. These machineries comprise of crane/hoist, conveyors, boiler, thresher and auto feeder.
Among the 15 major machineries, the conveyor had the lowest performance level because it has high
level of failures, which occurred almost every year. From the analysis, all 15 major critical machineries
have mean time to repair (MTTR) equal to zero. This means the level of machineries availability at
palm oil mill is 100 percent.
To summarize the explanation from the above analysis, the authors would narrow down the
scope of discussion. In this paper, the authors shall use the sterilizer as an example to perform detail
analysis on the machineries used in the palm oil mill. Figure 3 showed the availability of sterilizer
during the study period from year 2000 to 2005 is not very stable, which is fluctuating between 99.97
(i.e. on the high side) and 99.88 (i.e. on the lower side). The highest availability level achieved by
sterilizer was 99.97 percent in year 2000; meanwhile the minimum availability level achieved was
99.88 percent in 2002. Figure 3 also shows that the availability of the sterilizer is at its highest when
the failure rate was at its lowest. In short, it can be concluded there is some form of inverse relationship
between the sterilizer availability and failure rate.
Figure 3: Availability and Failure Rate of Sterilizer
Sterilizer
100
0.14
99.95
Availability, A (%)
Failure Rate, λ (%)

0.12
99.9 0.1
0.08
99.85
0.06
99.8
0.04
Availability
99.75
0.02
Failure Rate
99.7 0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Year
Thus, this phenomenon could be inferred the main 15 machineries involved in the processing of
oil palm fruit bunches to extract palm oil at AKOM would have the highest availability if the failure
rate or failure frequency is at the lowest. In short, this phenomenon can be inferred to the other 14
major machineries at AKOM that there is some form of inverse relationship between the failure rate
and availability occurred in production line. The maximum possible availability (i.e. 100 percent) had
been achieved by the major machineries at AKOM are due to several factors. From the analysis, the
main factor that could have significantly effect on the machineries availability is that they were not
assigned to operate with their full or maximum capacity. According to the company management’s,
AKOM was designed to process fresh oil palm fruit bunches (FFB) up to 35 metric tonne per hour.
However, at present the palm oil mill is only operating with about 20 metric tonne of FFB per hour. In
other words, at present the mill is only operating at about 57 percent of its full capacity and there is a
lot of unused capacity in the palm oil mill. Thus, the under utilised machineries at AKOM only give
rise to low machineries breakdowns and failure rate. In short, the palm oil mill operating capacity
could be further improved to a higher level and thus contributes towards better profitability for the
company.
From the study and shown in Figure 4, the authors found that the availability of the 5 major
machineries in AKOM were very high because they are still excellent condition. Referring to Figure 4,
the crane and hoist, which have lower availability compared to the other machineries (i.e.
press/digester, FFB conveyor, sterilizer and thresher / auto feeder), were the two most critical
machineries that need to be frequently monitored and inspected by the maintenance personnel. The
authors provide this suggestion because the crane and hoist availability were fluctuating between 99.75
and 99.99 percent. Although it only results in a slight drop in the level machinery availability, however
the drop in machinery availability is quite significant compared to other 4 machineries.
Figure 4: Availability of five major machineries at AKOM
6. Conclusions
To conclude the finding, the authors had found that there is an inverse relationship between the failure
rate and the machine availability at AKOM. The authors found that this inverse relationship between
the two variables in line with the industrial theory and past experiences. Therefore this mathematical
analysis results had proved that the high machineries availability at AKOM. The authors had also made
a few suggestions to the management of AKOM the effectiveness of the preventive maintenance
programme can be improved by performing the mathematical analysis as described in this paper; also
given such as, encourage management to establish regular monitoring and inspecting activity to the
crane and hoist because these two machines had a low level of availability. The study also reveals the
high level of machine utilization at AKOM was achieved due to the low level operation capacity. In
general, the study conducted at AKOM had achieved its objectives to evaluate the PMP at AKOM. The
authors had also found out, the PMP had been carried out in AKOM is adequate to accomplish the
whole FBB process efficiently. Lastly the authors would like to take the opportunity to suggest the next
study should be focused on the implementation the PMP mathematical model best suited for the palm
oil mills.
References
[1] Rusell, D. Meller and David S. Kim. 1996. The Impact of Preventive Maintenance on System
Cost and Buffer Size, European Journal of Operational Research 95. pp 577-591.
[2] Sofia, P., and George, T, 2006, Optimal Preventive Maintenance for equipment with two states
and general failure time distributions, European Journal of Operational Research. In Press,
Corrected Proof. Online 13 June 2006.
[3] Bris, R., Chatelet, E., Yalaoui, F., 2003, New Method to Minimize the Preventive Maintenance
Cost of Series-Parallel Systems, Reliability Engineering and System Safety 82, pp. 247-255.
[4] Worsham, W.C. 2005. Is Preventive Maintenance Necessary? Focus on reliability. Column at
Maintenance Resources.com. http://www.reliability.com/articles/reliability_articles.htm
[5] Lee, H. I., and Rosenblatt, M.J., 1987, Simultaneous Determination of Production cycle and
Inspection Schedules in a Production System, Management Science 33/9, pp. 1125-1136.
[6] Anderson, D. 2003. Reducing the Cost of Preventive Maintenance. Business Analyst –
Maintenance Oniqua EnterpriseAnalytics.
http://www.plantmaintenance.com/articles/PMCostReduction.pdf
[7] M.C. Eti, S.O.T. Ogaji dan S.D. Probert. T. Th. Reliability of the AFAM Electric Power
Generating Station, Nigeria.
https://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/bitstream/1826/760/2/RELIABILITY+OF+THE+AFAM+EL
ECTRIC+POWER+GENERATING+STATION+NIGERIA.pdf

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European Journal of Scientific Research

ISSN 1450-216X Vol.29 No.1 (2009), pp.126-135

A Study on Implementation of Preventive Maintenance

The objective of this paper is to study on the effects of Preventive Maintenance

Keywords: Preventive Maintenance Programme (PMP), Reliability, Failure Rate, Mean

Table 1: Number of Machineries Failures at AKOM

Breakdown time (hour)

Figure 2: Total Machineries Breakdown Time for Year 2000 to 2005

3.1. Mathematical Analysis on Machineries Performance at AKOM

Failure Rate (λ)

Table 4: Major Machineries Mean Time between Failures (MTBF) at AKOM

Table 6: Major Machineries Availability (A) at AKOM

Figure 3: Availability and Failure Rate of Sterilizer

Failure Rate, λ (%)

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