Maintenance strategies: A systematic approach for selection of the right strategies

Abstract

In this paper we use Computerised Maintenance Management Systems (CMMSs) to propose a method of selecting best maintenance strategies. There are fundamental questions that need to be asked with regard to existing CMMSs, such as: What do users really want from a CMMS? Does it support what is happening in the shop-floor? Or, Is it a rather expensive calendar to remind one of when to perform a maintenance schedule? Is it really worth spending so much effort, time, and money in buying a system for just being an electronic calendar or a monitoring device? Do existing CMMSs really contribute to the bottom line benefits of the company and support in the reduction of breakdowns or are they just a beast to be served by an army of IT specialists? Companies seem to spend a vast amount of resources in acquiring systems to perform data collection (clever databases) and data analysis (clever charts), and the added value to the business is often questionable. They then hope that somehow someone will make sense of the data and eventually things would get better. The key message here is that the aspect of decision support is missing in these systems. In this paper we propose a cohesive model that uses data in a CMMS to help in the selection of best maintenance strategies. It is an attempt to develop an intelligent system that can support decisions in maintenance.