Analyzing the effectiveness of overhaul maintenance in the energy sector: A critical review

Regardless of the overhaul outages planned with the aim of preventing failures on the energy plants in South Africa, it is witnessed not to be effective based only on the production ratio outcomes. The production ratio, as per the South African power enterprise is 80:10:10. The ratio is based on 80 % availability, the only fixed figure of 10% planned maintenance and 10 % unplanned maintenance of the power plants. The production ratio on most South African power station is not close to the above mentioned ideal ratio as witnessed on some stations whereby the station's ratio is recorded at 55:10:35. Overhaul maintenance on equipment are ideally rolled out as a failure preventative measure to prevent unplanned maintenance and thus ensure satisfactory availability of the power generating plant. In this paper, we illustrate the effectiveness and benefits of maintenance operations or strategies. Although numerous studies have been conducted over the past two decades to analyze effectiveness of maintenance strategies, there remains a gap in the current overview. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to conduct a theoretical assessment on the effectiveness of overhaul maintenance in the energy sector. The results of the critical analysis of the current literature on the subject matter, clearly demonstrates that there are flaws in the current body of knowledge related to a lack of boiler and quantitative studies.