ABSTRACT
The simple reason why maintenance is necessary is because one cannot make systems reliable enough to work without failure for their entire life cycle. This chapter describes two common techniques to optimise the maintenance process, namely, reliability centred maintenance (RCM) and total productive maintenance (TPM). It shows how the results from such processes must be used in the planning and scheduling of maintenance. RCM assumes that the organisation had the correct skills in sufficient number, the correct spares policy, the correct infrastructure and so on. On this basis, it optimises the plant. TPM, on the other hand, relies on constant interventions, meetings, flag waving, slogan setting and human motivation along with a set of hard measures to measure the effectiveness of the maintenance function. The goals of TPM are zero breakdowns, zero adjustments, zero idling, and zero defects. Two case studies describe the management of the RCM process and common mistakes that can be made.
