MAINTENANCE ENGINEERING

Research & development in maintenance Role of overhauling in maintenance Expert system in maintenance

Note: Data in this presentation is taken from different books and is used only for educational purpose. Credit

Muhammad Sajid Department of chemical engineering, UOG

Research and Development in Maintenance

Areas Need Improvements

Influence of maintenance on design and selection of plants. Use of available information. Training requirements. Standardization of products. Spare parts management Development o maintenance facilities. Concept of condition based maintenance. Concept of contract maintenance. Development of indigenous spare parts.

Areas Need Improvements(Cont.)

Influence of maintenance on design and selection of plants.

The necessity and importance of maintenance can be decided by the designer, manufacturer and users in consultation with each other in order to improve the availability and reliability of equipment/system. The sole aim here should be to keep the operating and maintenance costs to minimum.

Use of available information.

The information available on maintainability, reliability etc. can be used to improve the performance of the equipment/system

Areas Need Improvements (Cont.)

Training requirements.
to make full use of the advancements in technology.

The time to time training must be imparted to the practicing engineers and technicians

Standardization of products.
when they are imported, so that the users face minimum problems. Interchangeability of parts must be given due attention to make its use feasible.

Efforts should be make for the standardization of the parts/components particularly

Areas Need Improvements (Cont.)

Spare parts management

the determination of its quantity is a difficult task. Therefore, efforts should be make to use the facilities of experts in the field.

The availability of spare parts is the main concern of the maintenance engineers and

Development o maintenance facilities.

more challenging because of the size and the volume of the equipment/system . For effective working of maintenance groups, special facilities required must be developed to face the challenges in the field of maintenance.

The advancement in technology have made the task of the maintenance engineers

Areas Need Improvements (Cont.)

Concept of condition based maintenance.

Attempt should be make to use the modern techniques in the field of maintenance in the case of costly and sophisticated equipment/system. This concept is quite new and helpful in maintaining machinery effectively. Although the initial cost is more but better availability and safety of the equipment is assured.

Concept of contract maintenance.

As maintenance is complex in nature and required some expertise. With regard to specialized system/equipment the contract maintenance works well since qualified and trained personnel are engaged in the job. e.g. computer industry

Areas Need Improvements (Cont.)

Development of indigenous spare parts. In case of imported equipments/systems it is difficult to procure and preserve adequate quantity of spare parts and therefore efforts should be made to develop material and spare parts at the organizational level. Sometimes the manufacturers stop production of a particular type of equipment the same equipment is n use. Obsolescence is another factor, which calls for the development of technology to meet out the challenges.

Role of Overhauling
Equipment/systems are of two types I. Equipment with diminishing efficiency II. Equipment with constant efficiency Overhauling of first type of equipments, reduces its operational costs and extended its life span. The period of overhaul must be decided to actually derive the gain of the above concept.

Expert System in Maintenance

The unexpected equipment failure entail significant financial losses in manufacturing system. In order to avoid unscheduled failure, the concept of preventive maintenance with expert system can be used. An expert system is a program, which has a wide base of knowledge in a restricted domain, and uses complex inferential reasoning to perform tasks, which human experts could do.

Expert System in Maintenance(Cont.)

Knowledge Base: It encompasses knowledge about the domain problem. Knowledge representing methods are production rules, frames, semantic nets and predicate logic. Inference engine: The inference engine is the problem solving control strategy or rule interpreter, which applies the knowledge in the knowledge base of the problem. The strategies are forward and backward chaining.

External Maintenance

When maintenance within organization is not possible or maintenance system required some specific expertise then task given to external group of experts. This is called external maintenance. External maintenance is also called outsourcing. Many companies such as DESCON, EITMAD and FFC provide such specific services. Computer industry is a major outsourcing industry.

Logistics

Finance Management

Inventory Management

Effects of Maintenance

Cost effective maintenance will boost the productivity of the production system. Optimum maintenance will prolong the life of equipments/system. Helpful in achieving production target and continuous plant operation. Effective maintenance will enhance the reliability of the system/equipment. Proper maintenance will improve the working environment

Maintainability

Maintainability is defined as the probability of restoration of a failed device or equipment or asset to operational effectiveness within a specified time. It is associated to the design of assets to be maintained and is the measure of the ease of maintenance. Maintainability is expressed as mean time to repair (MTTR) i.e. how much time is required to restore the equipment/system to its working condition The limitation of maintainability are- it cannot be

Reliability

It is defined as the probability that an asset or a system will operate satisfactorily for a predetermined period of time, under the working conditions for which it was designed. Failure Rate (FR) or mean time between failure (MTBF) is a parameter to express reliability.

Principles of Maintenance
Effectiveness of maintenance depends on systematic conductance of various interrelated activities. To achieve the overall objectives of a maintenance system, certain established principles must be followed. These principles help guide the maintenance staff in the efficient discharge of their duties.

Plant Management in Maintenance Work

The main role of maintenance function is to provide safe and effective operation of production equipment in order to achieve the desired production targets on time economically. Sometimes it is observed that until and unless there is breakdown of equipment, the production department does not follow the maintenance programme because of its keenness to accomplish the job in stipulated time. Therefore it is necessary that all the departments cooperate with each other to meet the organizational goals.

Maintenance Objective Versus Plant Production

The plant production department is normally assigned production targets, in the light of which the maintenance team must formulate its assigned objectives to match the total objectives of the organization. It is observed that, in practice, the production department tends to overlook the maintenance functions in its eagerness to meet the production targets. Such an attitude may lead to serious circumstances, resulting in equipment failures or accidents. The programme of scheduled maintenance must be followed.

Establishment of Work-order and Recording System

Preparation of work order for maintenance activity is an important task as it indicates the nature of the work to be performed and the series of operations to be followed for a particular job. It is essential that at every workstation, proper records/entries be maintained to monitor the health of the equipment as well as its lifespan. Presently, in many organization this task is being performed with the help of computers.

Information Based Decision Making

Effective and reliable information system is essential for the successful execution of any activity. Such a system may be used for decision making in respect of manpower and spare parts requirements there fore data entries for any type of breakdown must be properly recorded in time, so that the same may be utilized as and when required.

Adherence to Planned Maintenance System

1.

Lack of implementation of manufacturer instruction during operation/maintenance.

2. 3.

Result is unscheduled breakdown Proper implementation of manufacturer instruction results longer life and safe operation

4.

Proper use of manpower

Planning of Maintenance Functions

Major jobs must be planned for effective use of resources. After breakdown cost analysis and comparisons must be done. Efficiency analysis of every major maintenance activity. Planning of un excepted breakdown/un even repairs.

Manpower for Maintenance

Work Force Control

As the nature of maintenance work is quite unpredictable, the cost of maintenance function can be kept under control only with proper monitoring of the work force. For this purpose field data must be collected regularly, accurately and completely.

Quality and Availability of Spare Parts

At the time of purchase of an equipment the manufacturer do supply some spare parts, but these are usually not sufficient for all types of

faults and for whole life of equipments.

It is essential to stock a complete range and scale of genuine spare parts to sustain the functionalities of the equipment without safety hazards.

Training of Maintenance Workforce

As equipment changing to modern and sophisticated, the nature of maintenance also needs changes. Whenever a new equipment is purchased, the maintenance personnel along with the operating personnel must be trained. Supervisory staff also required proper training for effective supervision and quality of maintenance. On job training and evaluation of training is also essential to meet growing challenges of maintaining sophisticated and delicate equipments.