DESIGN FOR MAINTENANCE - A SET OF DESIGN GUIDELINES

Design for Maintenance is an approach to influence the maintenance activities through the design of the equipment. This set
of guidelines serves as a tool to apply Design for Maintenance in practice. The guidelines describe various ways how these
future maintenance activities can be influenced. Applying the guidelines can help to reduce the number of maintenance
activities, to make them easier to execute or to decrease the logistic support time that is required for them.
The guidelines are divided into three categories:

Guidelines to enhance maintainability

Guidelines that focus on designing equipment
that can be repaired quickly and easily

Guidelines to enhance reliability

Guidelines that focus on designing equipment
with a low failure rate

Guidelines to enhance supportability

Guidelines that focus on designing equipment
that is easy to support

Whether or not the individual guidelines are useful to apply, depends on the situation in which the equipment is used. For a
number of them, trade-offs between the advantages and the involved cost should probably be made. The set of guidelines is
meant as a tool to start a discussion about the different design possibilities during the development process.

Guidelines to enhance
maintainability
Use materials that do not prolong
maintenance activities

Avoid non-corrosion resistant materials in

moist environments

Use standard, universally applicable

components
They are widely understood, what makes
it likely that they are easy to maintain or
that technicians know how to maintain
them

Use fasteners that

maintenance activities

accelerate

In the ideal situation, no tools are required

to open or remove components

Ensure that the operators of

installations are also able to maintain
them
Maintainable equipment is often user
maintained

Provide sufficient space around the

maintenance points
Maintenance personnel should be able to
execute maintenance with good posture

Guidelines to enhance
reliability
Design-out moving parts

Unnecessary movements need to be

avoided

Avoid unnecessary components

Limit the number of components by

eliminating the non-essential ones

Avoid non-rigid parts / avoid rigid

parts

Use tubes instead of hoses / use hoses

instead of tubes

Design for understressed use

In normal situations, the system is used at

less than full capacity

Provide redundancy

Standby systems or components can take

over the operation when necessary

Overdesign components

Dimension critical components larger

than minimally required

Guidelines to enhance
supportability
Use standard, universally applicable
components
Those are widely available

Avoid that expensive spare parts need

to be held in stock
In order to reduce the inventory costs

Minimise the number of different

types of fasteners
Only those need to be held in stock

Save useful life time data

The saved information can be used for

planning maintenance or improvement of
the design

Avoid that secondary tasks consume

a lot of time
The main
maintenance

activity

is

executing

Design for the use of standard tools

Every technician is able to execute

maintenance by having a standardised
tool kit

Guidelines to enhance
maintainability
(continued)
Design equipment in such a way that
it can only be maintained in the right
way
An unambiguous design induces that no
mistakes can be made when executing
maintenance

Guidelines to enhance
reliablity
(continued)

Guidelines to enhance
supportability
(continued)

Choose materials that can

withstand environmental
influences

Do not use materials that affect users

and technicians health

The equipment should withstand the

environmental conditions in which it is
used

Avoid corrosive chemicals for lubricants

and cleaning products

Design the system in such a way that

adequate forecasting of maintenance
is possible

Components that are regularly

replaced need to be easy to handle

Do not use coated, painted or plated

components
They need to be maintained to keep them
in good condition

Little variability in mean times to failure

of components enables preparation of an
adequate maintenance planning

Guarantee safety by the design itself

Use components and materials with

verified reliability

Build monitoring equipment into the

system

Standard size and weight, no sharp edges

and easy to transport
Instead of using warning labels and colour
codes

Design modular systems

Modular systems enable complete

replacement of a broken module to repair
it at a different place

Use standard interfaces

To enable quick connection between

modules and sub-systems

Design the weakest link

Every system has a weakest link, which

should be a relatively cheap and easily
replaceable component

Position components that often

need to be maintained at an easily
accessible place

Location of components could be based

on the number of times they need to be
maintained

Proven technology minimises the chance

of unexpected system behaviour

Design robust interfaces between

components

The interaction between components has

a strong influence on the reliability of the
system

Use
parallel
components

subsystems

and

Systems containing parallel subsystems,

each with the same function, are less
likely to fail completely

Distribute workload equally over

parallel subsystems or components

Wear, and therefore behaviour, of both

systems or components will be the same

In order to know if maintenance needs to

be executed and to reduce the time for
isolating faults

Ensure that as few as possible

technicians are required to perform a
maintenance task

Fewer personnel has to be available at

the moment maintenance needs to be
executed

Personnel with a variety

backgrounds should be able
execute maintenance

For executing maintenance one should

not depend on a single employee

Provide understandable
maintenance instructions

The instructions need to be understandable

by everyone who is expected to perform
the required maintenance

Position the maintenance points close

to each other
The maintenance location is known
beforehand

The guidelines are explained and illustrated in:

Mulder, W., Blok, J., Hoekstra, S., Kokkeler, F.G.M.(2012). Design for maintenance. Guidelines to enhance
maintainability, reliability and supportability of industrial products. Enschede, University of Twente
Any remarks or questions can be emailed to w.mulder@utwente.nl
Version: September 2013

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