PLANT MAINTENANCE

INTRODUCTION
The definition of maintenance often stated maintenance as an activity carried out for any
equipment to ensure its reliability to perform its functions.

Maintenance to most people is any activity carried out on an asset in order to ensure that the
asset continues to perform its intended functions, or to repair any equipment that has failed, or to
keep the equipment running, or to restore to its favorable operating condition.

Over the years, many new strategies have been implemented as a maintenance strategy which is
intended to overcome the problems which is related to equipment breakdown. Some of the
common maintenance strategies are as follows:

Breakdown Maintenance - This is one of the earliest maintenance program being implemented
in the industry. The approach to maintenance is totally reactive and only act when the equipment
needs to be fixed. This strategy has no routine maintenance task and also described as no
scheduled 2 maintenance strategy. To rectify the problem, corrective maintenance is performed
onto the equipment. Thus, this activity may consist of repairing, restoration or replacement of
components. The strategy is to apply the corrective maintenance activity only, which is required
to correct a failure that has occurred or is in the process of occurring.

Preventive Maintenance - This is a time-based maintenance strategy where on a predetermined

periodic basis, equipment is taken off-line, opened up and inspected. Based on visual inspection,
repairs are made and the equipment is then put back on-line. Thus under this equipment
maintenance strategy, replacing, overhauling or remanufacturing an items is done at a fixed
intervals regardless of its condition at the time. Although this is a well-intended strategy, the
process can be very expensive as typically 95% of the time everything was alright. Nevertheless,
some preventive maintenance is necessary as some regulation such as DOSH regulation require
that annual/bi-annual boiler inspection to be conducted.

Predictive Maintenance - Predictive maintenance is a more condition-based approach to

maintenance. The approach is based on measuring of the equipment condition in order to assess
whether an equipment will fail during some future period, and then taking action to avoid the
consequences of that failures. This is where predictive technologies (i.e. vibration analysis,
infrared thermographs, ultrasonic detection, etc.) are utilized to determine the condition of an

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equipment, and to decide on any necessary repairs. Apart from the predictive technologies,
statistical process control techniques, equipment performance monitoring or human senses are
also adapted to monitor the equipment condition. This approach is more economically feasible
strategy as laborers, materials and production schedules are used much more efficiently.

Proactive Maintenance - Unlike the three type of maintenance strategies which has been
discussed earlier, proactive maintenance can be considered as an another new approach to
maintenance strategy. Dissimilar to preventive maintenance that based on time intervals or
predictive maintenance that based on condition monitoring, proactive maintenance concentrate
on the monitoring and correction of root causes to equipment failures. The proactive
maintenance strategy is also designed to extend the useful age of the equipment to reach the
wear-out stage by adaptation a high mastery level of operating precision.

However, the table below describe the simple explanation of how the maintenance structure runs;

Maintenance Strategy Maintenance Approach Signification

Let it break Machine has stopped, repair it Large maintenance budget

Breakdown Maintenance

Fix-it when broke

Run to failure/

Firefighting/

Corrective maintenance

Prevent it from breaking Plan to stop a machine on certain Periodic component replacement
Preventive Maintenance date or repairs

Planned Time based Scheduled

Predict the situation Machine not stopped. Monitor Maintenance performed only
and predict the condition of the once the condition is assets and
Predictive Maintenance
machine then the machine is stopped.
Condition monitoring, (Vibration
analyses, Oil analyses,

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Thermography)

Condition-based Monitoring

Be proactive Detection of Sources of Failures Monitoring and correcting failing

root cause
Proactive Maintenance

RCM,PF curve, MTBF, MTTF

Design-out the breakdown Rout cause analysis, Fishbone Change the design and rebuild
Design- out maintenance method etc.

THE CHANGING REALM OF MAINTENANCE

Globally, maintenance has become more important in the industry and the role of maintenance has grown
into a much more prominent purpose in the plant operation. From a simple expectation of keeping a piece
of equipment running or restoring it to the desired operating condition. Most management today see a
different role of maintenance, now they see maintenance as a factor that can affect:

1. Business effectiveness, 2. Risk 3. Safety 4. Environmental integrity 5. Energy efficiency 6.

Product quality 7. Customer service 8. Plant availability 9. Cost benefits

Thus, as the climate of the doing business changed so does the need for better maintenance program. In
general, the evolution of maintenance changes usually is categorized into 3 different generations, the
period of 1930’s-1940’s which usually referred as the First Generation, between 1950’s to 1970’s often
recognized as the second generation, and the 1980’s till recent which commonly accepted as the third
generation.

The evolution in the maintenance process also rooted from the changing complexity of the industry itself.
The first generation is the earlier days of industrialization where mechanization is low. Most equipment in
the factory is basic and repairing and restoration process is done in a very short time. Thus, the term
downtime did not matter much and there was no need for managers to put maintenance as a high priority
issue.

The second generation emerged as the results of growing complexity in equipment and plant design. This
had led to increase mechanization and industry was beginning to depend on these complex machines.
Repairing and restoration has become more difficult and special skill and more time is needed to mend

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the machinery. As this dependence grew, downtime became more apparent a problem and getting a
sharper focus from the management. People are beginning to think that these failures should be prevented
which led to the concept of preventive maintenance. As maintenance cost started to rise sharply relative to
other operating cost, there is a rising interest in the field of maintenance planning and control systems.
Beginning in the 80’s, the growth of mechanization and automation has becoming more complex and
some small breakdowns in equipment could affect the operation of the whole plant. This has meant that
reliability and availability have become key issues since any failure can have serious consequences to the
whole division.

The fundamental amongst the differences between the second and third generation’s
maintenance are:

1. Focus is now not only concentrated on availability but also reliability.

2. There is a push towards zero downtime or zero in-service breakdowns.

3. Improved maintenance tools such as RCM, Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), RCFA, Failure
Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA).

Under the third generation maintenance principles in many organizations have stated zero
breakdowns/zero in-service failures as their maintenance goals. However, since no amount of
maintenance can guarantee the total elimination of failures (there is always probability of failing-but may
be very close to zero) is no longer a realistic objectives that is achievable, a more realistic approach is to
avoid, reduce or eliminating the consequences of failures.

FOURTH GENERATION MAINTENANCE

Due to the rapid changes in the development of equipment and process, accelerated with the help of faster
computers, it is only a matter of time when the maintenance scenario entered its fourth generation. As
being discussed earlier, third generation maintenance has undergone a shift of focus in maintenance to
highlight those areas where the inherent design of the assets yields probabilities of failures that are
unacceptable, and provide some guidance and motivation for improving those assets.

Hence, the basic principles of the fourth generation of maintenance although are expected to
be based on the previous three generations will have some signified feature:

1. Definite deliberation of risk, notably at higher levels of organizations, when dealing with equipment
design and maintenance strategies

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2. Coherence between functional demand, equipment design and maintenance will be greater than the
currently existing integration.

3. There will be swift development in information technology to detect, predict, diagnose and prevent
equipment failures will.

4. Computer modelling maintenance strategy may provide the predictive tools of the future. Not only that
computers help in collecting and storing data, it will also help us to better understand the focal source of
an equipment failure.

With these changes, maybe the focus of maintenance will change and perhaps the new mission of
maintenance department is more towards providing an excellent support for their customers by reducing
the need for maintenance.

MAINTENANCE COST
In recent years, there is a growing concern on the subject of higher maintenance cost and maintenance
productivity. According to some company, maintenance is the largest single manageable expenditure in
the plant: in many companies, surpass their annual net profit. Although many agrees that maintenance
strategies such as preventative and predictive maintenance program has been shown to produce saving of
up to 25%, study have shown that still 1/3 of these maintenance cost can be saved. Typically,
maintenance cost can be divided into two main groups. The first group referred as direct costs are easy to
justify and to report. These direct costs consist of items such as labour, materials, services, and
maintenance overhead cost are the cost tabulated and shown as maintenance costs. The other group of
maintenance costs is hidden costs or indirect costs which are harder to measure. These hidden cost of
maintenance are classified as the six big losses:

1. Breakdowns and unplanned plant shutdown losses.

2. Excessive set-up, changeovers and adjustments losses.

3. Idling and minor stoppages.

4. Running at reduced speed.

5. Start-up losses.

6. Quality defects.

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Therefore, it is very important for companies to maximize their maintenance effectiveness and equipment
uptime. According to a study on maintenance productivity, most maintenance department is only around
25% to 35% productive. This causes many companies to experience difficulties with quality control,
production levels and schedule adherence, since the equipment they are using is not properly maintained.
However, maintenance productivity can be drastically improved by planning and scheduling of
maintenance activities. For the past 20 years, most manufacturers have only focusing on reducing costs in
the manufacturing processes to stay competitive as the low cost producer. This effort although yielded
some measurable productivity gain still retarded the opportunity for the additional maximum gain in the
overall productivity since maintenance often was excluded from these improvement plans. Clearly, it is
also important to integrate maintenance program into these improvement agenda.

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