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Introduction
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BACKGROUND
Since the Industrial Revolution, maintenance of engineering equipment in the field
has been a challenge. Although impressive progress has been made in maintaining
equipment in the field in an effective manner, maintenance of equipment is still a
challenge due to factors such as size, cost, complexity, and competition. Needless
to say, today’s maintenance practices are market driven, in particular for the manu-
1
facturing and process industry, service suppliers, and so on. An event may present
an immediate environmental, performance, or safety implication. Thus, there is a
definite need for effective asset management and maintenance practices that will
positively influence critical success factors such as safety, product quality, speed of
innovation, price, profitability, and reliable delivery.
Each year billions of dollars are spent on equipment maintenance around the world.
Over the years, many new developments have taken place in this area. The terms
“maintenance” and “maintenance engineering” may mean different things to differ-
ent people. For example, the U.S. Department of Defense sees maintenance engi-
neering as a discipline that assists in acquisition of resources needed for maintenance,
and provides policies and plans for the use of resources in performing or accom-
2
plishing maintenance. In contrast, maintenance activities are viewed as those that
use resources in physically performing those actions and tasks attendant on the
equipment maintenance function for test, servicing, repair, calibration, overhaul,
modification, and so on.
Comprehensive lists of publications on maintenance and maintenance engineer-
ing are given in References 3 and 4.

MAINTENANCE AND MAINTENANCE

ENGINEERING OBJECTIVES
Even though maintenance engineering and maintenance have the same end objective
or goal (i.e., mission-ready equipment/item at minimum cost), the environments under
which they operate differ significantly. More specifically, maintenance engineering
is an analytical function as well as it is deliberate and methodical. In contrast, main-
tenance is a function that must be performed under normally adverse circumstances
and stress, and its main objective is to rapidly restore the equipment to its operational
readiness state using available resources. Nonetheless, the contributing objectives of
maintenance engineering include: improve maintenance operations, reduce the amount
and frequency of maintenance, reduce the effect of complexity, reduce the maintenance
skills required, reduce the amount of supply support, establish optimum frequency

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and extent of preventive maintenance to be carried out, improve and ensure maximum
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utilization of maintenance facilities, and improve the maintenance organization.
This book directly or indirectly covers both maintenance and maintenance engineer-
ing and their objectives.

MAINTENANCE FACTS AND FIGURES

Some the important facts and figures directly or indirectly associated with engineer-
ing maintenance are as follows:

• 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
5
spent to correct the chronic failure of machines, systems, and people.
• In 1970, a British Ministry of Technology Working Party report estimated
that maintenance cost the United Kingdom (UK) was approximately
6,7
£3000 million annually.
• 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
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spent on maintenance activities.
• The typical size of a plant maintenance group in a manufacturing orga-
nization varied from 5 to 10% of the total operating force: in 1969, 1 to
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17 persons, and in 1981, 1 to 12 persons.
• The U.S. Department of Defense is the steward of the world’s largest
dedicated infrastructure, with a physical plant valued at approximately
$570 billion on approximately 42,000 square miles of land, i.e., roughly
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the size of the state of Virginia.
• The operation and maintenance budget request of the U.S. Department of
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Defense for fiscal year 1997 was on the order of $79 billion.
• Annually, the U.S. Department of Defense spends around $12 billion for
depot maintenance of weapon systems and equipment: Navy (59%), Air
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Force (27%), Army (13%), and others (1%).
• In 1968, it was estimated that better maintenance practices in the U.K.
could have saved approximately £300 million annually of lost production
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due to equipment unavailability.

ENGINEERING MAINTENANCE IN THE

21ST CENTURY
Due to various factors, it was established in the previous century that “maintenance”
must be an integral part of the production strategy for the overall success of an orga-
nization. For the effectiveness of the maintenance activity, the 21st century must build
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on this.
It is expected that equipment of this century will be more computerized and
reliable, in addition to being vastly more complex. Further computerization of equip-
ment will significantly increase the importance of software maintenance, approaching,

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if not equal to, hardware maintenance. This century will also see more emphasis on
maintenance with respect to such areas as the human factor, quality, safety, and cost
effectiveness.
New thinking and new strategies will be required to realize potential benefits
and turn them into profitability. All in all, profitable operations will be the ones that
have employed modern thinking to evolve an equipment management strategy that
takes effective advantage of new information, technology, and methods.

MAINTENANCE TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

This section presents some terms and definitions directly or indirectly used in engineer-
2,14–19
ing maintenance:

• Maintenance: All actions appropriate for retaining an item/part/equipment

in, or restoring it to, a given condition.
• Maintenance engineering: The activity of equipment/item maintenance
that develops concepts, criteria, and technical requirements in conceptional
and acquisition phases to be used and maintained in a current status during
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the operating phase to assure effective maintenance support of equipment.
• Preventive maintenance: All actions carried out on a planned, periodic,
and specific schedule to keep an item/equipment in stated working con-
dition through the process of checking and reconditioning. These actions
are precautionary steps undertaken to forestall or lower the probability of
failures or an unacceptable level of degradation in later service, rather
than correcting them after they occur.
• Corrective maintenance: The unscheduled maintenance or repair to return
items/equipment to a defined state and carried out because maintenance
persons or users perceived deficiencies or failures.
• Predictive maintenance: The use of modern measurement and signal-
processing methods to accurately diagnose item/equipment condition during
operation.
• Maintenance concept: A statement of the overall concept of the item/product
specification or policy that controls the type of maintenance action to be
employed for the item under consideration.
• Maintenance plan: A document that outlines the management and tech-
nical procedure to be employed to maintain an item; usually describes
facilities, tools, schedules, and resources.
• Reliability: The probability that an item will perform its stated function
satisfactorily for the desired period when used per the specified conditions.
• Maintainability: The probability that a failed item will be restored to ade-
quately working condition.
• Active repair time: The component of downtime when repair persons are
active to effect a repair.
• Mean time to repair (MTTR): A figure of merit depending on item main-
tainability equal to the mean item repair time. In the case of exponentially
distributed times to repair, MTTR is the reciprocal of the repair rate.

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• Overhaul: A comprehensive inspection and restoration of an item or a piece

of equipment to an acceptable level at a durability time or usage limit.
• Quality: The degree to which an item, function, or process satisfies require-
ments of customer and user.
• Maintenance person: An individual who conducts preventive maintenance
and responds to a user’s service call to a repair facility, and performs cor-
rective maintenance on an item. Also called custom engineer, service person,
technician, field engineer, mechanic, repair person, etc.
• Inspection: The qualitative observation of an item’s performance or
condition.

MAINTENANCE PUBLICATIONS, ORGANIZATIONS,

AND DATA INFORMATION SOURCES
This section presents selected publications, organizations, and data information sources
directly or indirectly concerned with engineering maintenance.

PUBLICATIONS
Journals and Magazines

• Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering, MCB University Press,

U.K.
• Industrial Maintenance & Plant Operation, Cahners Business Informa-
tion, Inc., U.S.A.
• Maintenance Technology, Applied Technology Publications, Inc., U.S.A.
• Maintenance Journal, Engineer Information Transfer Pty. Ltd., Australia.
• Reliability: The Magazine for Improved Plant Reliability, Industrial Com-
munications, Inc., U.S.A.
• Maintenance and Asset Management Journal, Conference Communica-
tions, Inc., U.K.

Books and Reports

• Maintenance Engineering Handbook edited by L.R. Higgins, McGraw-

Hill Book Company, New York, 1988.
• Engineering Maintenance Management by B.W. Niebel, Marcel Dekker,
Inc., New York, 1994.
• Maintenance Fundamentals by R.K. Mobley, Butterworth-Heinemann,
Inc., Boston, 1999.
• Maintenance Strategy by A. Kelly, Butterworth-Heinemann, Inc., Oxford,
U.K., 1997.
• Reliability-Centered Maintenance by J. Moubray, Industrial Press, Inc.,
New York, 1997.
• Applied Reliability-Centered Maintenance by J. August, Penn Well, Tulsa,
Oklahoma, 1999.

©2002 CRC Press LLC