Dr. Charles M.M.

Ondieki Multimedia University College -Kenya

1. What are the tools of terotechnology 2. How we can use terotechnology to select cost effective maintenance 3. We have a case study electric power station which uses many methods to apply to the maintenance on the power plant: preventive ,reactive ,predictive maintenance , and condition monitoring (CM), and sometimes they use CBM. So the main question how can we use terotechnology to select the best of maintenance method?

Definition of 'Terotechnology'
It is defined as a combination of management, financial, engineering, building and other practices applied to physical assets in pursuit of economical life cycle costs. Its practice is also concerned with the specification and design for reliability and maintainability of plant, machinery, equipment, buildings and structures, with their installation and replacement, and with the feedback of information on design, performance and costs. Life-cycle costs could also, with advantage, be replaced by Life-cycle profits in the above. Terotechnology uses tools such as: Net present value, Internal rate of return, and Discounted cash flow in an attempt to minimize the costs associated with the asset in the future. These costs can include engineering, maintenance, wages payable to operate the equipment, operating costs and even disposal costs. The approach of terotechnology helps to obtain maximum benefit from the physical assets as this involves: Systematic application of engineering, Financial and management expertise in the assessment of the life cycle impact of an acquisition (plant/equipment/machines etc.) on the revenues and expenses of the acquiring organization. The practice of of terotechnology is a continuous cycle that begins with the design and selection of the required item, follows through with its installation, commissioning ,operation , and maintenance until the item's removal and disposal and then restarts with its replacement. (You can see maintenance is part of terotechnology) Preventive maintenance (PM) Any task designed to prevent failures or mitigate their effects. Predictive maintenance (PdM) Predictive maintenance (PdM) techniques help determine the condition of in-service equipment in order to predict when maintenance should be performed. This approach offers cost savings over routine or time-based preventive maintenance, because tasks are performed only when warranted. The main value of Predicted Maintenance is to

allow convenient scheduling of corrective maintenance, and to prevent unexpected equipment failures. The key is "the right information in the right time". By knowing which equipment needs maintenance, maintenance work can be better planned (spare parts, people etc.) and what would have been "unplanned stops" are transformed to shorter and fewer "planned stops", thus increasing plant availability. Other advantages include increased equipment lifetime, increased plant safety, fewer accidents with negative impact on environment, and optimized spare parts handling. Reactive Maintenance (RM) Maintenance performed only after a machine fails or experiences problems Condition Monitoring (CM) The continuous or periodic measurement and interpretation of data to indicate the condition of an item to determine the need for maintenance. Condition based maintenance (CBM) Maintenance carried out according to the need as indicated by condition monitoring. Total Quality Maintenance (TQMain.) It is a concept which enables the user to continuously maintain and improve the technical and economical effectiveness of manufacturing process elements. Its role may be defined as a means for monitoring and controlling deviations in a process condition and product quality, and for detecting failure causes and potential failures in order to interfere when possible to arrest or reduce the deterioration rate before the product characteristics are intolerably affected and to perform the required actions to restore the machine process or a particular part of it to as good as new. All these should be performed at a continuously reducing cost per unit of good quality product. Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) It consists of a range of methods, which are known from maintenance management experience to be effective in improving reliability, quality, and production. It requires the operators to take over some of the maintenance staff tasks, e.g. cleaning, lubricating, tightening bolts, adjusting and reporting their observations about changes in the machine condition. The Selection of the Most Cost-Effective Maintenance Policy or Strategy Achieving high-quality maintenance requires prevention at source and, therefore, the focus should be on identifying and eliminating the cause of equipment deterioration rather than the more traditional approach of either letting the equipment fail before repairing it or fire fighting in the case of an emergency. Maintenance practice improves with the adoption of benchmark standards arising from the worlds best, and having pertinently trained personnel with commitments to continual professional development. Two proactive maintenance practices (RCM and TPM) have been identified and their implementation recommended. RCM is a structured, logical process for developing or optimizing the maintenance requirements of a physical system to realize its inherent reliability. This reliability depends on both the equipments design, construction and how it is used. RCM is a methodology based on the following precepts;

Failure is an unsatisfactory condition; The consequences of failure determine the priority of the maintenance effort to be expended; Equipment redundancies should be eliminated; CBM or predictive-maintenance tactics are favoured over traditional fixedperiod schedules methods; and Where warranted, run-to-failure is accepted.

The high-quality approach of prevention at source is translated to the maintenance environment through the concept of TPM. This results in superior availability, reliability and maintainability of the equipment and also in significant improvements in capacity with a substantial reduction in both maintenance costs and total operating cost. TPM is focused on applying preventive/predictive strategies to identify and repair equipment before deterioration ensues. Total productive maintenance (TPM) involves all production personnel in appropriate maintenance tasks via the use of self-directed small work groups. Root-cause analysis (RCA) classifies the problem into associated categories, such as people, procedures or hardware, and tries to prevent recurrences of the problem. Reliability-engineering principles (REPs) are applied to solve problems so leading to reductions in the overall cost arising from unreliability. The way maintenance is performed will influence the availability of production facilities, the rate of production, quality of the end product and cost of production, as well as the safety of the operation. These factors in turn will determine the profitability of the enterprise. The four strategic dimensions of maintenance are: Service-delivery options i.e. the choice between using an in-house capability and an outsourced service. Organization of the maintenance function and the way the task is structured. Maintenance methodology, i.e. the selection of the preferred maintenance policy or policies. Design of the infrastructure that supports the maintenance function. Unprecedentedly high business-performance can be achieved if the available skills and resources are focussed on a limited set of core competencies, i.e. a bundle of skills and technologies that enable one to provide a particular benefit to customers. Thus, maintenance activities for which the company has neither a strategy nor the special expertise required are prime candidates to be outsourced. Maintenance activities, which the company can typically outsource, include the maintenance and repair of electronic and environmental equipment, mobile vehicles and buildings. The appropriate maintenance approach can be determined using the RCM methodology, which provides a structure for determining the maintenance requirement of any physical asset, with the primary object of reducing the systems function-cost. Performing a systems function failure analysis, for the first time, is labour intensive and time consuming. RCM draws on the operators intimate knowledge about the deteriorating equipment and requires their resourcefulness to

develop innovative, more cost-effective ways of performing the PM tasks. The collaboration should nurture teamwork spirit between operational and maintenance personnel, replacing the adversarial relationships and disputes arising from the perceived boundaries of responsibilities, which commonly exist. Furthermore the learning, deductions and communications arising from RCM studies will enhance the intellectual base of the organization. The optimization of inspection, maintenance and replacement-decisions depend on the availability of high-quality pertinent data. Autonomous maintenance, which is a key element of TPM, requires the implementation of the following procedures: Cultivating a sense of ownership in the operator by introducing autonomous maintenance, i.e. the operator takes responsibility for the primary care of his/her plant. Optimizing the operators skills and knowledge of his/her plant in order to maximize operating effectiveness: the operator is thus mobilized to detect early signs of wear, maladjustments, leaks, errant chips or loose parts. He/she is also involved in making improvement suggestions to eliminate losses due to the breakdown or sub-optimal performance of the plant. Using cross-functional teams, consisting of operators, maintainers, engineers and managers to improve the overall-plants performance. Establishing a schedule of cleanup and preventive maintenance to extend the plants lifespan and maximize its uptime. RCM is an asset-centred methodology, with a primary focus on making decisions with respect to the type of maintenance tasks to be undertaken. TPM, on the other hand, focuses on people and is an integral component of the total quality-management (TQM); it usually requires changes in employees attitudes and their standards of behaviour, which may take a long time to accomplish. The Application of CM and CBM To survive hard international competition, it is necessary for many producing companies to enhance their competitive positions by, for example, reducing production costs and maintaining and improving product quality to increase the profit margin. In order to achieve these strategic goals, strategies for making maintenance more profitable are developed and implemented. Modern machinery is expensive and therefore must run at high availability and effectiveness which cannot be achieved without an effective maintenance policy. Condition monitoring, (CM), techniques can be utilized to reduce or arrest the rate of deterioration of a component so increasing operating life. In the case of a bearing the rolling element bearings mean effective life could be extended appreciably if an existing vibration-based maintenance policy is used effectively. This result is achieved by a combination of data analysis and logical development. A new maintenance approach was developed to overcome some of the limitations of total productive maintenance, TPM, and reliability-centered maintenance, RCM, and is based upon the Deming managerial feedback cycle (PlanDo-Check-Act). This method is called Total Quality Maintenance, (TQMain). It is a

methodology to sustain and improve continuously the technical and economic effectiveness of the manufacturing process elements. It can be shown logically that by using vibration-based monitoring (VBM), program in the frame of a common database for a plant IT-system the causes behind quality deviations and failures can be identified and eliminated effectively at an early stage and the companys economics would be improved. The condition-based maintenance (CBM) effectiveness and accuracy are usually related to the ability of the condition monitoring (CM) system to detect failure causes and follow defect development. But, in most real cases, CM systems are not utilized effectively and companies are satisfied with the partial savings achieved in maintenance cost. Improvements in vibration-based maintenance can be achieved by effective feedback of the results of failures, renewal condition and VBM history analysis. Maintenance and Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) The relationship between RCM and traditional maintenance practices can best be summarized as follows: Plant and equipment are installed and employed to do what the users want them to do. Maintenance is undertaken in a variety of forms, to ensure that the plant and equipment continue to do what the users want it to do. Reliability Centred Maintenance determines what maintenance needs to be performed and what testing and inspection needs to be performed to support the maintenance strategy. The outcomes of an RCM analysis can result in changes to existing preventive maintenance tasks, the use of condition monitoring, inspections and functional testing, or the addition or elimination of such tasks. The figure below shows the structure of maintenance.

When used effectively it can result in the enhancement of safety and reliability of plant and equipment and the optimization of operations and maintenance activities.

RCM is not a process, which will result in short term benefits, so those adopting it should be prepared for a 5 to 10 year payback term. RCM as a tool for Optimization of Operations and Maintenance activities RCM is a decision making tool. Operations and maintenance programs can benefit both the processes involved in the decision-making, soft benefits and the outcomes, that result in the changes to maintenance and operations programs. The following are some examples: The act of performing the RCM decision-making process provides a benefit in promoting better cooperation among all of those involved in the process. The process demands that all established tasks are challenged with the objective of justifying the continued use or removing/replacing them with other tasks, in doing so it promotes a healthy questioning attitude. The process raises awareness of the functions of the systems involved, the consequences of failure of those functions and the economics of operating and maintaining them. The clear aims of RCM are to improve reliability and optimize the cost effectiveness of maintenance activities. When performed effectively it will result in the elimination of unnecessary maintenance tasks and the introduction of measures to address omissions and deficiencies in maintenance programs. The Principles of RCM The RCM analysis process centres on the functions of plant and equipment, the consequences of failure and measures to prevent or cope with functional failure. The process must establish answers to the following questions and an effective response to them: What are the functions and performance standards of the plant? In what ways does it fail to fulfil its functions? What causes each functional failure? What happens when each failure occurs? In what way does each failure matter? What can be done to predict or prevent each failure? What should be done if a suitable proactive task cannot be found?

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) analysis provides a structured framework for analyzing the functions and potential failure modes for a physical asset (such as an airplane, a manufacturing production line, etc.) in order to develop a scheduled maintenance plan that will provide an acceptable level of operability, with an acceptable level of risk, in an efficient and cost-effective manner. The cost-based comparisons can be very useful to help RCM analysts to select the most appropriate maintenance strategy for a particular piece of equipment/failure mode. I hope you can deduce your answer from this write up. I recommend that you select Maintenance and Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), both of which are part of Total Quality Maintenance (TQMain.) for your work.

Dr. Charles M.M. Ondieki