Maintenance Performance Evaluation and Downtime Analysis of Manufacturing Equipment in a Food Manufacturing Company

Abstract

In food manufacturing, maintenance of manufacturing equipment is one of the most important essentials for an efficient manufacturing as this sector continuously face challenges that makes maintenance very critical due to the nature of manufacturing, thus as a result food manufacturing companies must add or modify their maintenance strategies in order to keep production running efficiently. The aim of this study is to carry out a maintenance performance evaluation and downtime analysis in a food manufacturing company and suggest areas for further improvement. In this study, an empirical case study was carried out in order to evaluate the maintenance performance and downtime analysis. Overall equipment effectiveness and Pareto analysis were used to carry out a maintenance performance evaluation and downtime analysis on the manufacturing equipment using three years historical data obtained from the food manufacturing company as an industrial case study.  The study found that the average overall equipment effectiveness is 55.30% which is a low value when compared with Overall Equipment Effectiveness world standards, meaning that the manufacturing organisation is operating in an average condition and there is a required urgent improvement of maintenance policies and strategies, otherwise it will be difficult for the manufacturing organisation to sustain it. Thus it is necessary that in order to improve productivity, the manufacturing organisation under study should look into its manufacturing strategies so that urgent improvement of maintenance policies and strategies can be implemented and adopted.