Handbook of Maintenance Management and Engineering

Book excerpt: To be able to compete successfully both at national and international levels, production systems and equipment must perform at levels not even thinkable a decade ago. Requirements for increased product quality, reduced throughput time and enhanced operating effectiveness within a rapidly changing customer demand environment continue to demand a high maintenance performance. In some cases, maintenance is required to increase operational effectiveness and revenues and customer satisfaction while reducing capital, operating and support costs. This may be the largest challenge facing production enterprises these days. For this, maintenance strategy is required to be aligned with the production logistics and also to keep updated with the current best practices. Maintenance has become a multidisciplinary activity and one may come across situations in which maintenance is the responsibility of people whose training is not engineering. This handbook aims to assist at different levels of understanding whether the manager is an engineer, a production manager, an experienced maintenance practitioner or a beginner. Topics selected to be included in this handbook cover a wide range of issues in the area of maintenance management and engineering to cater for all those interested in maintenance whether practitioners or researchers. This handbook is divided into 6 parts and contains 26 chapters covering a wide range of topics related to maintenance management and engineering.