MP4704 Maintenance Management strategy

In an article published in 2013 in the International Journal of Engineering and Innovative Technology, P.S. Vaisakh wrote that “Inventory management is the process of efficiently overseeing the constant flow of units into and out of an existing inventory. Inventory management of spare parts plays an important role in achieving the desired plant availability at an optimum cost. Combined FSN and VED analysis is carried out to find the non-moving items which are less critical.”

(a)using suitable examples or references, explains what is meant by “inventory management”, “availability at an optimum cost”, “FSN” and “VED”.

(b)Discuss the suitability of Combined FSN and VED analysis OR more generally the need for hybrid analysis

Question 2: Maintenance Planner

“Effective maintenance planning and scheduling is vitally important for every asset, because not only does it enable production and safety targets to be hit, but it can also save time and money. Proactively planning and scheduling maintenance can often seem impossible amid unexpected priority changes and urgent requests - or what many describe as “firefighting”.” Three challenges have been identified:

-Unplanned work

-Neglecting preventative maintenance

-Estimating the time to complete planned maintenance tasks

(a)Explain what is meant by backlog management and the steps it is necessary to take to have successful backlog management.

(b)Using   suitable   examples   or   references,   discuss   three   challenges   that   a Maintenance Planner could face.

[Hint] You may consider different challenges as part of your answer.

Question 3: PM and RCM

Mike Busch reported in 2014 in the OAPA foundation blog that “the pioneering WWII-era work of the eminent British scientist C.H. Waddington, who discovered that the scheduled preventive maintenance (PM) being performed on RAF B-24 bombers was actually doing more harm than good, and that drastically cutting back on such PM resulted in spectacular improvement in dispatch reliability of those aircraft. Two decades later, a pair of brilliant American engineers at United Airlines—Stan Nowlan and Howard Heap—independently rediscovered the utter wrongheadedness of traditional scheduled PM, and took things to the next level by formulating a rigorous engineering methodology for creating an optimal maintenance program to maximize safety and dispatch reliability while minimizing cost and downtime. Their approach became known as “Reliability- Centered Maintenance” (RCM), and revolutionized the way maintenance is done in the airline industry, military aviation, high-end bizjets, space flight, and numerous non- aviation applications from nuclear power plants to auto factories.

(a)Using suitable examples or references, explain what is meant by PM and RCM

(b)Using suitable examples, explain the outcome of the Nowlan and Heap investigations

Question 4: TPM myths

Discuss seven possible reasons for the failure of TPM implementation in an organisation [Hint] Each reason must be independent.

Greg Folts, President, Marshall Institute has identified 5 TPM myths. Discuss the 5 myths.

-Myth 1 – TPM is all about operator-based maintenance

-Myth 2 – TPM can be driven by one passionate champion

-Myth 3 – Many Kaizen workshops strung together will result in sustainable change

-Myth 4 – TPM will become so much a part of the culture that we will not need to focus on the process any longer

-Myth 5 – Teams are a waste of time and resources