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Top1. Introduction
With competition in the world continually increasing, organizations have been forced to adapt new competitive strategy (Galli, 2020). One such strategy is how to minimize production loss due to breakdown. Maintaining a breakdown-free production line is the goal of any manufacturing plant in ensuring its operating costs kept as minimum as possible. To conduct a reliable maintenance program has to be in place to maintain the machine and system in good working condition and that all necessary repairs done on time in full. The type of maintenance program applied can be divided into two categories: breakdown (emergency) maintenance and preventive maintenance. Breakdown maintenance deals with machines or systems after it has broken down and failed to perform its intended function. Preventive maintenance (PM), on the other hand, is time-based maintenance aimed at reducing or avoiding breakdowns and involves carrying out maintenance activities on a periodically scheduled basis.
One of the main challenge in developing a maintenance strategy with the constraints of availability of resources, is using the right-thinking framework (Galli, 2018a). These challenges are significant for small and medium sized plants those face lot of difficulty in their attempts in innovating maintenance strategies due to their small size and limited resources (Nikabadi, & Hakaki, 2018). If done right, preventive maintenance has an immense potential to increase the reliability of a system, enhance machine up-time, minimize equipment breakdown, and improve the efficiency of production plants at low operating costs. Various activities (cleaning, inspection, lubrication, tightening, and replacement of worn parts) carried out under the PM program must have one aim, and that is to increase both the availability and reliability of all machines on the production plant. Machine reliability is increased by reducing its risk to fail, hence allowing the device to work correctly to perform its desired functions during a specified period under predetermined conditions (Kiyak, 2011). Availability is the proportion of time a machine is available out of the time it should be possible. It increased by minimizing unplanned downtime and changeover times. A well-maintained production plant will, therefore, have higher equipment availability and reliability hence be more profitable.
With preventive maintenance, the aim is to detect and prevent faults before they create disturbances in the machine and production system(Lagnebäck, 2007). As devices get old, their probability of failure increases much as specific parts and components begin to wear. At this point, leaving the equipment too long without any form of maintenance will result in a catastrophic failure. The desired preventive maintenance to perform on a machine influenced by several factors, including the level of technology, type of production processes, and the age and condition of the equipment. With a higher degree of PM planning and execution, the total breakdown and time losses of the plant can reduce significantly, thereby increasing the reliability and availability of the production system.