Maintenance management tools

Maintenance management is the last cost saving frontier of scientific management. For generations, top management has concentrated on finance, administration, marketing and production, largely ignoring maintenance-maintenance has been considered a necessary evil. But noticeable changes have occurred in the 1980s. Firstly, the cost to keep plant and equipment in operation has escalated tremendously and top management has therefore turned some attention to this area. Unfortunately, much of this attention has been in the form of cost-cutting and budget reduction by finance managers. Fortunately, in some enlightened companies, there are those who take a slightly longer term view, and understand the need to optimise maintenance cost rather than just minimising it. Secondly, new tools have become available to the maintenance manager which enable him to operate more effectively and efficiently. These tools are the on-line maintenance management system, condition monitoring equipment and more recently, the expert or knowledge-based system. This paper is concerned principally with maintenance management systems and their effective introduction into organisations