Maintenance Management

The management of maintenance in both industrial and business applications has become more critical as the physical assets maintained have increased quite considerably in complexity. Maintenance tasks have thus become more difficult, requiring high skill levels from the work force and incurring high spares costs. In addition, as production capacity is increasingly concentrated in larger assets the downtime costs, which result from equipment unavailability, can be very high. In particular, the growth in the use of computerised plant control systems, automation and robotics is forcing companies to take maintenance management seriously. There is the potential for catastrophic production loss, with the possibility of company bankruptcy if any of these systems are out of action for any length of time.