An approach to measuring the quality of maintenance performance

This paper presents an approach that quantifies the performance of the maintenance system in terms of the quality of service, offered by maintenance to the production system. Maintenance is discussed as involving both technical and economic issues. This influences the definition of maintenance quality and maintenance performance used in this work. This is because maintenance can be considered of high quality if the latter is measured (or evaluated) by only technical terms such as quality rate. However, this does not necessarily mean that maintenance is so when its performance is measured in economic terms. This issue is important and is highlighted in the paper. The motivation for writing the paper is the need for a scientific means of conflict resolution between the maintenance and production department. There are frequently complaints from the production department that the quality of the machines soon after maintenance is sometimes poor, thus leading to a shortened period of production. The methodology adopted hinges on the framework in which scrap generation, rework and reject are partly due to the malfunction of the machine. Thus, if a machine has a deteriorated state soon after maintenance, it is likely to produce rejects, scrap or reworked materials. It is argued that the measurement of performance using this approach is helpful and could be used for planning purposes. The approach utilized in this work is new, and represents a contribution to the maintenance performance literature.