Maintenance Engineering

Dr. M. S. Senthil Saravanan

 Introduction
• Global Competition in Industry sector- fight to
survive & produce profit- increased use of
modern technology leads to MAINTENANCE
an integral part of any production unit
• Responsibility of maintenance engineer
increased
• Effective use of available resources
• Maintenance costs are major portion in total
 Maintenance Engineering
• It is the art that is intended to retain an machine or
an equipment or restore it to, a state in which it can
perform a required function or an operation.
• It is the discipline and profession of applying
engineering concepts to the optimization of
equipments, procedures to achieve better reliability
and availability of equipments.
• It is the art, science and philosophy that aides in
increased productivity and has become the most
 Basic Concepts of Maintenance
• In general, All actions necessary for retaining
an item, or restoring to it, a serviceable
condition, include servicing, repair,
modification, overhaul, inspection and
condition verification. Increase availability of
a system.
• Keep system’s equipment in working order are
the main role of maintenance Engineering.
 Importance
• Responsible for smooth & efficient working of
a plant
• Improve the productivity
• Keep the machine/equipment at their optimum
operating condition
• Maintaining & improving the operation
efficiency of the plant facilities
• Increase the profit by reducing the operational
 Purpose of Maintenance
• The main purpose of maintenance in an industrial
perspective is to reduce the business risks. Production
capacity, productivity and business profit mainly depends on
maintenance operations.
• Its main purpose is to support ,configure, diagnose , repair,
update and mange a equipment throughout it’s life cycle.
• In general maintaining all equipments at its full functionality
and helping productivity is the main function of maintenance
engineering.
• Attempt to maximize performance of production equipment
efficiently and regularly.
• Prevent breakdown or failures.
• With the increased complexity, Sophistication and
automation of the equipments and systems, a heavy
burden falls on maintenance engineers regarding the
quality and quantity of maintenance, maintenance aids,
documentation etc.,
• The current scenario is that today’s jobs and problems
cannot be solved with yesterday’s tools and techniques.
• So continuous development is needed in maintenance
areas to tackle today’s need and also anticipated need
of tomorrow.
 Functions of Maintenance
• 4 major categories
– Basic functions
– Composite functions
– Primary functions
– Secondary functions
 Basic Functions
• Replacing
• Repairing
• Overhauling
• Rebuilding
• Servicing/lubricating
• Inspecting/Checking
• Testing
 Composite Functions
• Maintenance policies, procedure, standards
developing
• Schedule the maintenance works
• Reduce downtime and increasing availability
• Document and maintain record of maintenance
activity
• Ensure cost effective maintenance
• Forecast the maintenance expenditure
 Primary Functions
• Selection of bearings, chains, gears, cylinders,
lubricants etc
• Inspection & monitoring of lubrication system
• Identification & correction of electrical problems
• Prevention of overload
• Identification of proper electrical motors &
transformers
• New installation (HVAC)
 Secondary Functions
• Store keeping & inventory management
• Plant protection
• Waste disposal
• Salvaging & recycling
• Plant & equipment insurance administration
 Objectives of Maintenance
• To achieve product quality and customer
satisfaction through adjusted and serviced
equipment.
• Maximize useful life of equipments.
• Keep equipments safe and prevent from hazards.
• Minimize frequency and severity of interruptions.
• Maximize production capacity – through high
utilization of facility
 Principle of Maintenance
• Plant management in Maintenance work
– Provide safe and effective operation of equipment
• Production and maintenance objectives
– Achievement of desired goals (production targets)
• Establishment of work order and recording system
– Maintain Proper records and entries to monitor
maintenance functions
• Information based Decision making
– Information about manpower and spare parts
 Principle of Maintenance
• Adherence to planned maintenance strategy
– Maintenance schedule of the equipments
• Manpower for Maintenance
– How much man power needed
• Planning for maintenance functions
– Planning for effective utilization of resources
• Role of Spare parts
– Use of proper spare parts
 Benefits
• Minimization of downtime
• Provide Adequate back up supply
• Extended life of equipment
• Increased reliability of the system
• Safety of the personal involved
• Providing a proper working environment
 Effects of Maintenance
• Maintenance has a major role in industry to
reach goal in the production system
• Selection of right maintenance policy –based
on past history
• Good maintenance policy leads to increased
life of the equipment
• Maintenance relates production targets and
 Facts & Figures
• Each year over $300 billion are spent on plant
maintenance and operations by U.S. industry,
and it is estimated that approximately 80% of
this is spent to correct the chronic failure of
machines, systems, and people.
 Facts & Figures
• Annually, the cost of maintaining a military jet
aircraft is around $1.6 million; approximately
11% of the total operating cost for an aircraft is
spent on maintenance activities.
 Maintenance Productivity
• Maintenance productivity is one of the most
important issues which govern the economics of
production activities.
• With increasing awareness that maintenance
creates added value to the business process;
organizations are treating maintenance as an
integral part of their business
• In larger companies, reducing maintenance
expenditure by $1 million contributes as much to
 Productivity
• The ratio of the output to input of a production
system.
• The output of the production system is the
products or services delivered while the input
consists of various resources like the labour,
materials, tools, plant and equipment, and
others, used for producing the products or
services
• Improvement in maintenance productivity can
be achieved through reduction in maintenance
materials as well as reductions in projects,
outages and overhaul savings
• Measuring maintenance productivity
performance is critical for any production and
operational company in order to measure,
monitor, control and take appropriate and
timely decisions
 Quality in Maintenance
• Quality : extent to which the maintenance
actions lead to desirable outcomes
• Other meanings of quality
• Degree of excellence
• Freedom from defects
• Delighting customers
• Fitness for purpose
 Quality Control Steps
• Determination of Parameter
• Establish as specification for parameter
• Plan
• Organize resources
• Collect data
• Verify the results
• Propose remedies
 Reliability
• Ability of a component or system to function at a
specified moment or interval of time
• Probability that an item will continue to perform
its intended function without failure for a specified
period of time under stated condition
• In the simplest sense, reliability means how long
an item (such as a machine) will perform its
intended function without a breakdown.
• Reliability is performance over time, probability
 Types of Reliability
• Inherent reliability
❖ Quality of the material and design of machine parts
• Achievable reliability
❖ Maintenance and Operation of the equipment
Factors for determining Reliability
• Probability
– A value between 0 and 1, number of times that an
event occurs (success) divided by total number trials
– e.g. probability of 0.91 means that 91 of 100 items
will still be working at stated time under stated
conditions
• Performance
– Some criteria to define when and how product fails,
which also describes what is considered to be
satisfactory system operation
Factors for determining Reliability
• Time
– system working until time (t), used to predict
probability of an item surviving without failure for
a designated period of time
• Operating conditions
– These describe the operating conditions
(environmental factors, humidity, vibration, shock,
temperature cycle, operational profile, etc.) that
Need of reliability in Maintenance
• Identify the flaws in system design
• Compare several possible system
configurations
• Minimize downtime
• Maximize operational readiness
• Reduce operating costs
• Develop maintenance policies
 Bathtub Curve
Failure Rate
λ(t)

Infant Mortality
Steady State Wear out
(Early Life Failures)

Operating Time

Bathtub curves
Early-life period
Steady-state period
 Early-life Period
• Also called infant mortality phase or reliability
growth phase
• Caused by undetected hardware/software defects
that are being fixed resulting in reliability growth
• Can cause significant prediction errors if
steady-state failure rates are used
• Availability models can be constructed and solved
to include this effect
 Steady-state Period
• Failure rate much lower than in early-life period
• Either constant (age independent) or slowly
varying failure rate
• Failures caused by environmental shocks
• Arrival process of environmental shocks can be
assumed to be a Poisson process
• Hence time between two shocks has the
 Wear out Period
• Failure rate increases rapidly with age
• Properly qualified electronic hardware do
not exhibit wear out failure during its
intended service life (Motorola)
• Applicable for mechanical and other systems
 Terms associated with reliability
• Failure
– A failure is an event when an item is not available to
perform its function at specified conditions when
scheduled or is not capable of performing functions to
specification
• Failure density
– The number of failures per unit of gross operating
period in terms of time, events, cycles.
• Failure rate
• Probability of failure
 Maintainability
• The ability of an item, under stated conditions of use,
to be retained in, or restored to, a state in which it can
perform its required function(s), when maintenance is
performed under stated conditions and using prescribed
procedures and resources.
• Principles of Maintainability
➢ Reduce life cycle maintenance
➢ Reduce the amount, frequency and complexity
➢ Reduce the Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)
➢ Determine the optimum level of preventive maintenance
➢ Reduce the need of Maintenance
 Parameters for Measuring
Maintainability
• Mean Time To Failure (MTTF)
• Mean Time Before/Between Failure (MTBF)
• Mean Time To Repair (MTTR)
• Mean Waiting Time (MWT)
• Mean Down Time (MDT)
• Mean Time To Restore
• Maintenance hours per operating hours
• Failure - A failure is an event when an item is
not available to perform its function at
specified conditions when scheduled or is not
capable of performing functions to
specification.
• Failure Rate - The number of failures per unit
of gross operating period in terms of time,
events, cycles.
• MTBF - Mean Time Between Failures - The
average time between failure occurrences. The
• MTTF - Mean Time To Failure - The average time
to failure occurrence. The number of items and
their operating time divided by the total number of
failures.
• Hazard - The potential to cause harm. Harm
including ill health and injury, damage to property,
plant, products or the environment, production
losses or increased liabilities.
• Risk - The likelihood that a specified undesired
event will occur due to the realisation of a hazard
by, or during work activities or by the products
• MTTR - Mean Time To Repair - The average time
to restore the item to specified conditions.
• Maintenance Load - The repair time per operating
time for an item.
• Availability - A measure of the time that a system
is actually operating versus the time that the
system was planned to operate. It is the probability
that the system is operational at any random time t.
• Supportability - The ability of a service supplier to
maintain the Plant inbuilt reliability and to perform
scheduled and unscheduled maintenance according
to the Plant inbuilt maintainability with minimum
 Assignment Questions
• What are the intended functions of your
system/product?
• What are the specified operating conditions ?
• What is time t at which you want to estimate
reliability?
• What is the reliability?
• What is expected by the users?
 System Reliability
• A system is a collection of components,
subsystems and assemblies to a specific design
in order to achieve a desired functions with
acceptable performance and reliability
• The system operates successfully if all the
parts operate successfully but it may operate if
any of the parts failed
• A reliability model represents a clear picture
 Reliability model: Series model
• The components are arranged in series
• Success of the system depend on the success of
all its components.
1 2 n

RS = R1 R2 ... Rn
Desktop computer consist of 4 basic component (mother board, hard drive, power
supply& processor. If any one fails, entire PC also fails
 Parallel model
• System can be partially operative if some of its
components are in state of failure
1 Aircraft engine: if one engine
fails, it will run with other
engine..
2

n
RS = 1 - (1 - R1) (1 - R2)... (1 - Rn)
 Series-Parallel model
• More complex configurations exist where
components are arranged in Series & Parallel.
C
RA RB RC RD
A B D
C

RC
RC’ = 1 – (1-RC)(1-RC)
RS = RA + RB + RC’ +RD
 Availability
• A measure of the degree to which an item is in the operable
and committable state at the start of a mission, when the
mission is called for at an unknown time.
• Availability is thus defined as the probability that an item will
be available when required or as the proportion of total time
that an item is available for use.
• Availability is a measure that allows for a system to repair
when the failure occurs
 Operational Availability
• Probability that a system or equipment shall
operate satisfactorily under prescribed supply
environment

MDT – Mean down time

 Types of Availability
• Inherent Availability (AI)
• Achieved Availability (AA)
• Operational Availability (AO)
 Inherent availability
• Probability that a system or equipment shall operate
satisfactorily when used under prescribed conditions in an
ideal support environment without any scheduled or preventive
maintenance at any given time.
• This can also be defined as steady – state availability.
 Achievable Availability
• Probability that a system shall operate
satisfactorily when used under prescribed
conditions in an ideal support environment
with periodic and corrective maintenance

M’ – Mean active Maintenance

 RAM
• RAM – Reliability, Availability & Maintainability
• Reliability and availability affects Maintainability
• RAM affects the economic life cycle costs and utility of a
system
• RAM analysis provides increase system productivity, increase
overall profit, reduce the total life cycle costs etc
 Important Questions
• Explain any four basic functions of maintenance?
• What are the composite functions?
• Mention the primary and secondary functions
• Objectives of maintenance
• Main areas in principles of maintenance
• Objectives of reliability engineering
• Bathtub curve and types of reliability
• Different types of reliability models
• Maintainability & Availability
• Importance of RAM analysis
Thank you