Thermography's impact on economic performance: minimizing the cost of downtime and maintenance

Infrared Thermography is one of many technologies used to increase maintenance efficiency, and one of the most versatile. To a maintenance manager, it may seem obvious that the investment is needed, but when it is time to convince the rest of the management, technical arguments may fall short. This paper deals with this borderline area. It is intended to show how maintenance efforts improve the overall economic performance of the company. Using economic theory, it can be shown that when a certain mix of maintenance technologies is used, there will be an ideal point where the sum of down time cost and maintenance cost is at its minimum. This point will correspond to a certain percentage of plant availability. Thus, it will not make sense to increase or decrease the volume of maintenance spending, because what is won in lower down time cost is lost even more in higher maintenance cost, or vice versa. Two conclusions can be made, 1. If management wants to increase plant output by increasing availability, it should be done by improving the way maintenance is done, not how much maintenance is done. 2. Fine tuning maintenance methods will. always yield a higher availability of the plant, at a lower combined cost of maintenance and down time. The clue is to have properly trained and equipped personnel who maintain the plant in a properly organized manner. That is a truism, of course, but finding that proper mix is certainly not easy.