Page 401 - Improving Machinery Reliability

Chapter 10

Maintenance for

Most industrial plants have well-defined maintenance procedures; however, they
are under frequent and intensive scrutiny as to their cost-effectiveness. There must
always be a positive return and value to every maintenance task performed. Without
the value concept uppermost in mind, maintenance departments are often accused-
sometimes justifiably-of “gold plating.” This chapter conveys a few of the organi-
zational and procedural means of avoiding either of the two obvious extremes, i.e.,
doing too much and not doing enough to optimally affect the bottom line.

Modern Maintenance Approaches and When to Apply Them

The best way to achieve high reliability is to design-out maintenance. Indeed, our
text is supposed to make just this point; it has been our intent to approach the issue
of designing-out maintenance from different angles. Nevertheless, it must be recog-
nized that at least for the foreseeable future, plant and equipment designed for zero
maintenance will be neither economically viable nor justifiable in the overwhelming
majority of cases. Putting it another way: maintenance will be required, and we
might as well try to identify and implement optimized maintenance methods.
Since this text does not purport to be a maintenance handbook, we will confine
our scope of discussion to an overview of the two most prominent maintenance
methods, TPM (total productive maintenance) and RCM (reliability-centered main-
tenance). While we do not take issue with either of these approaches, we would like
to explain that neither of these highly touted methods represents a “magic bullet,” or
quick, inexpensive solution to a rather complex subject. It is simply our objective to
deal openly with the many, often overlooked prerequisites to the successful imple-
mentation of modern management techniques.

What is TPM?

TPM (total productive maintenance) is a relatively recent addition to the plethora
of hot management TLAs (three-letter acronyms) imported from Japan. It is closely
tied to JIT (just-in-time) and TQM (total quality management), and is an extension
of PM (preventive maintenance).

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