Proactive reliability maintenance: a case study concerning maintenance service costs

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to emphasize that the choice of the most appropriate maintenance model and policies is the best way to reduce significantly the maintenance costs as well as to optimize the useful Key Performance Indicators – failure rates, reliability, mean time between failures, mean time to repair, and equipment availabilities.

Design/methodology/approach

In order to implement the Asset Effectiveness Optimization AEO as well as the Overall Equipment Effectiveness OEE, improving productivity in a complex food‐products plant, the paper presents a theoretical and experimental study related to the maintenance costs directly associated with the equipment used in production tasks.

Findings

The developed tool is an efficient method of calculating the maintenance costs and allows one by means of computational simulation to define the most advisable maintenance policy. On the other hand, the proposed relationships are universal and could be used as an economic evaluation indicator for other industries and equipment.

Research limitations/implications

Further research should include the application of the proposed methodology to the similar equipment of other food‐products plants as well as to other different equipment in order to create benchmarking procedures. This generator of technical information is the most appropriate method of optimizing maintenance key performance indicators.

Practical implications

As is well known, equipment availability must be as close to 100 per cent as possible, in order to avoid non‐planned breakdowns with the consequent production losses. Then it is important to adopt the most advisable maintenance policies and practices, the proposed methodology being an efficient tool for evaluating the maintenance performance and, in addition, for optimizing procedures.

Originality/value

The proposed methodology represents an efficient way to evaluate the maintenance performance as well as to choose better maintenance policies and practices in order to reduce costs and increase maintenance key performance indicators.

Citation

Manuel Inácio da Silva, C., Manuel Pereira Cabrita, C. and Carlos de Oliveira Matias, J. (2008), "Proactive reliability maintenance: a case study concerning maintenance service costs", Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering, Vol. 14 No. 4, pp. 343-355. https://doi.org/10.1108/13552510810909957