Effectiveness of Preventive Maintenance on Deteriorating Systems: A Maintainability Based Approach
Many studies have previously been conducted relating to maintenance concerns in deteriorating systems. Much of the focus of these investigations has been in the field of reliability engineering with little consideration given to maintainability engineering. As noted in MIL-HDBK-470A, "maintainability, a design characteristic, concerns the relative ease and cost of preventing failures through maintenance actions." This research examines the effectiveness of enhancing maintainability on systems through improving preventive maintenance policies. This paper describes some of the preventive maintenance policies in effect today and shows how these policies are important considerations in design for maintainability. Furthermore, a relationship between maintainability, reliability, life cycle costing, and system performance is established. In examining this framework of operations, it is evident that implementing or improving a preventive maintenance policy can have a much-desired effect on a system. The proper preventive maintenance policy can decrease failure and downtime of a system, thus increasing performance while decreasing cost.
School:
University of New Orleans
Department:
Mechanical Engineering
Research Advisor:
Lucio Soibelman
Department of Research Advisor:
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Year of Publication:
2002