On the
other hand, if a fellow mechanic requires assistance because more than one of his
designated machines is down, the idle mechanic still may not assist him as those machines
do not belong to his own assigned list or work zone. Under this type of scenario, it is not
rare to find machines waiting to be serviced, while other mechanics are idle, creating a
variety of issues such as unnecessary non-productive time, additional labour costs,
imbalance of workloads, poor morality and motivation, etc. Even though it may seem
that, as long as there are ‘plenty’ of mechanics, the availability of the machines will be
high. This traditional system of corrective maintenance may hinder the mechanics from
servicing machines out of his assignment or work zone and consequently lowers personnel
utilisation and efficiency (Hartman, 1987). The realised availability of machines is actually
lower due to the inefficiency and rigidity of the static assignment policy.