A maintenance policy selection tool for industrial machine parts

Industrial maintenance activities may be categorised under three strategies, preventive, corrective and predictive. It is necessary to identify domains of equipment and decide which maintenance policy suits each domain of equipment. Usually, it is assumed that maintenance managers are capable of achieving this job. This assumption however is practical, relies on the human factor, which as known to humans, could involve mistakes and hence may lead to implementing the wrong maintenance strategies. Money losses would eventually result. This paper presents a tool that deals with equipment as machine parts domains, where the domain is the group of the similar machine parts which undergo the same conditions. The suggested tool consists of a dual criteria categorisation grid, which through historical data, experts' knowledge and mathematical formulation selects the most suitable maintenance policy for each machine part (domain) individually. The implementation of this tool should guarantee the execution of the appropriate maintenance policy with each and every machine part; therefore it should result in a more economical production function and a more efficient maintenance function. Examples from industry are given to further clarify the proposed tool applications.