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Home / IT & Computer Science / Engineering / Introduction to Maintenance Engineering / Why should we learn about Maintenance?

Why should we learn about Maintenance?

Why is maintenance is important in industries?
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Hi, welcome to this wonderful journey to the world of maintenance during the first day of journey. I’m going to take you and explain you why maintenance is important. Why maintenance is important for industry and for our daily life and in our daily life. In fact, maintenance is very, very critical for economic viability of industries, companies and owners of infrastructure. All items, in a sense, is unreliable as it degrades with age and time and ultimately fails. Failure consequences can be mere inconvenience or something very serious. For example, if train is delayed due to some problems in infrastructure, you will get irritated, people will get angry, people will get annoyed. But if brake has failed, something catastrophic may take place.
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Some catastrophic accidents may take place. That’s why maintenance is very, very important. Let’s look at the famous statement of Murphy. Murphy, in his laws pertaining to maintenance states, if any equipment can fail, it will fail. What a statement. Nobody can stop it. It means
104.5
Failure will usually occur at the most inconvenient time. That’s the most important part of this whole statement. It will occur at the most inconvenient time. What does it mean in the morning, I want to go to a job. I’m getting late is starting my car, and car is not just starting. That’s the statement he has made. Murphy is known for his statement. Some people like it. Some people get irritated at him because he gave basic fundamental definition of failure and maintenance. In fact, what is failure? We have a different definitions of failure, but the most common definition is failure is the termination of the ability to perform a required function. Look carefully at the definition.
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A required function means it is subjective. Different people have a different requirement on the car. If it is not, so there’ll be no market for second hand car. People sell their car because they are not happy with the function. They don’t want this car. And some people, especially the students they like it second hand cars because they can afford it. So and it is very good for them. So failure is a termination of the expected function and what expected brings subjectivity into definition that we have to remember. Once we go look into these two things, what has happened to the paradigm of maintenance, people have started putting more and more focus on maintenance.
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And let us look in the past, in early 1900, it was like that necessary evil. It cost what it cost? I can’t do anything.
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Then it changed to it can be planned and control. And this is the focus that it is an important functions. I can control maintenance. I can. I can plan it. And I can perform maintenance as when I want it. And that happens after World War Two in 50s, and it continued the same paradigm till 80s. But what happened in early 90s and also beginning of this century, people start thinking maintenance creates additional value in the business process and it become an integral part of the business process. People start integrating, people start bringing focus even on board level that we have to plan maintenance. We have to invest in maintenance because it creates additional value. What is the additional value?
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It can improve the productivity. It can enhance the safety performance of the company. It can create a pleasant environment because system machines equipment’s working as the plan. Let’s look what is the role of maintenance? So if I want to summarize this, what I’ve been talking, so what its role is to facilitate system performance assurance of system performance, means it delivers the functions and it delivers at the cheaper rate it that is return on investment. If I invest on one dollar, I can get two or three dollars and also do guarantees it HSC health, safety and environment. It facilitates and will be looking more detail on these topics in upcoming lectures.
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I would be devoting a lot of time on return investments and how to facilitate improving health, safety and environment indicators. Also, not only that, it creates additional value in the business process because in the sense, if I’m able to deliver my goods and services in time, customers will be happy and that has additional value. It’s not only the functionality, the customer becomes happy, there’ll be many return call to us all to the companies and you make more money out of it. You create more value in the process and your performance is enhanced. So this is the role of maintenance in short How value is added by maintenance, summarizing like it creates economic performance.
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You get better quality of product, you improve safety and health indicators. And, of course, by doing good maintenance, you can increase the lifespan of your machine, like if I’m doing good maintenance on my car, taking it for service. Car will be running for many, many years. That’s increasing lifespan of the car. And of course, it adds to the environmental value in society because good car will have less environmental issues, less exhaust problem, etc..
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And, of course, a well-maintained car, a well maintained workplace, a well-maintained factory looks beautiful. It has a different value.

In this short lecture, we will emphasize on why maintenance is important in industries.

Most of the components degrade over a period and lead to failures. These failures have consequences such as inconvenience to customers, accidents and significant losses. The definition of failure changes according to the context like how each person believe as a function. Hence, failure is the termination of the ability to perform a required function. Usually, people perceive maintenance where they perform only after an accident.

During early 1950’s, they understood that it can be planned and controlled where it supports important function. During present times, it is understood that maintenance creates additional value to the process, and it is integral process of business.

Hence, the main values of maintenance are to improve economic performance of the system, improve the quality, increase safety/health and increase overall lifespan of the systems. The main purpose of maintenance is to reduce business risk. The main factors that influence the existence of the maintenance are unreliability, human errors, loss of quality, etc. These can also lead to reduce accidents.

In summary, why do we need maintenance?

  • The effective maintenance will increase safety, reduce cost and improve the sustainability.

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learning?

This content is taken from
Luleå University of Technology online course,

Introduction to Maintenance Engineering

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Want to keep learning?

This content is taken from Luleå University of Technology online course
Introduction to Maintenance Engineering
View Course
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Introduction to Maintenance Engineering

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