Evaluating maintenance strategies effectiveness on overall equipment utilization

The performance and competitiveness of manufacturing companies is dependent on the reliability, availability and productivity of their facilities. To ensure the plant achieves the desired performance, maintenance managers need a good understanding of the effectiveness of different maintenance systems. The company understudy had been experiencing frequent breakdowns of critical machines and this, negatively affected productivity. The researchers set objectives to establish the causes of machine breakdown, determine the level of plant utilization and availability, evaluate the percentage of sales lost due to downtime and determine the level of mean time to repair (MTTR). The hypothesis tests developed were based on the mentioned objectives as the major indicators of maintenance effectiveness. Direct observations, structured interviews and company records were used to collect data. Microsoft excel, and megaStat were used for data analysis. The results came double folded indicating breakdown maintenance not effective as it under-utilized the plant's equipment, lowered plant availability, decreased the sales and increased the level of mean-time to repair (MTTR). The researchers developed and recommended an effective reliability centred maintenance (RCM) decision diagram as a major contributor to equipment availability and reliability and productivity improvement for the company.