Cost analysis of maintenance and non-maintenance policies for productive equipments

Studies of maintenance programs cannot be implemented, in any company, if costs are not considered. In fact, they are the most important issue to be examined when deciding among different maintenance programs. They are basic to decide whether maintenance activities should be practiced or not. The main issue to be discussed is how costs should be analysed. Only when the costs of a maintenance program are compared to the costs originated from the lack of maintenance is it possible to convince company managers to implement maintenance programs. Managers must be convinced that the money applied on maintenance programs is, in fact, an investment that reduces not only repair costs but also the machines' downtime costs. This work offers a literature review on the subject as well as an analysis of costs involved in different maintenance policies and tools. All these costs are analyzed in terms of machine availability and its benefits. These costs are also compared to those of machine repair and machine downtime that result from a non-maintenance policy.