Title: Selecting and improving a maintenance policy for mechanical components using cost-effectiveness

Authors: Anders Ingwald; Basim Al-Najjar

Addresses: Department of Techniques of Maintenance and Production Management, School of Engineering, Linnaeus University, Building-M, 351 95 Växjö, Sweden. ' Department of Techniques of Maintenance and Production Management, School of Engineering, Linnaeus University, Building-M, 351 95 Växjö, Sweden

Abstract: Maintenance has in recent years more and more become recognised as contributing to company profitability and competitiveness. Consequently, the need of selecting the most cost-effective maintenance for a certain component/equipment under certain circumstances has become more emphasised. For a certain component/equipment there might be more than one technically suitable maintenance policy to choose from. The most cost-effective maintenance policy should be selected. In this paper, the most popular selection methods have been introduced, discussed and compared using 11 criteria for identifying their weaknesses and strengths. Also, a study exploring maintenance selection methods in Swedish industry is conducted. Furthermore, a model for selecting and improving a maintenance policy based on cost-effectiveness is developed, tested and discussed in an application example. The model is designed to be user-friendly and usable for all types of maintenance policies. It can utilise historical data regarding failures if available and allow feedback and continuous improvements.

Keywords: maintenance policy; maintenance selection; fuzzy MCDM; maintenance decision making; cost effectiveness; mechanical components; cost effectiveness; cost-effective maintenance; Sweden; historical data; component failures; feedback; continuous improvement; fuzzy logic.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSEAM.2012.050919

International Journal of Strategic Engineering Asset Management, 2012 Vol.1 No.2, pp.153 - 171

Published online: 23 Aug 2014 *

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