The Modern Approach to Industrial Maintenance Management
The maintenance activity isn’t a purpose in itself, it’s a necessity of which “the production suffers” and the financial agent “considers too expensive”. It often exists a conflict between the production units and the maintenance department, not only for a short term, but, sometimes, for a long term, imposing a rigorous definition of each person’s responsibilities. Considering the mutations in the industrial equipments’ technical complexity and the accidental failures’ catastrophic consequences from the economic and/or social point of view, it should be assigned a new dimension to the maintenance activity. One of the imperatives imposed to this action is represented by modern means of informing through the maintenance’s operational computerization.
Keywords: Maintenance’s Progress, Total Productive Maintenance, Cooperation In Maintenance, The Maintenance’s Costs Minimization, Maintenance’s Operational Computerization
The maintenance’s place in an industrial company’s management system. The activity of maintenance isn’t a purpose in itself, it’s a necessity of which “the production suffers” and the financial “considers being too expensive”. It often exists a conflict between the production units and the maintenance department, which is responsible with the equipments’ status and conservation, not only for a short term, but also for a long term. In many cases, the industrial companies, wanting to reduce the current total costs, considering the above mentioned conception, the uncertainty about the company’s future, orient towards reducing the budget allotted to the activities of preventive maintenance. In the reality, this policy’s effect isn’t the wanted one, the costs with the corrective maintenance ncreasing as a result of an increase of the accidental failures’ frequency, at which are added the greater and greater
failures in case of impairment or of functioning parameters’ degradation. In the same time, the maintenance works’ increase in number and in value will bring about in the future a decrease in the preventive maintenance’s available resources, the industrial company entering into a vicious circle from which it will be able to come out really hard.
In order to reconcile these points of view that contradict each other just on the surface, the activity of maintenance must be put in its proper place inside the company and each person’s responsibilities should be properly
defined (this is an issue of policy and structure). In the same time, the maintenance activity should be organized in such a manner, that it should allow solving all the problems specific to maintenance, in the most efficient possible way (the economic criteria should become a priority, in the most of the cases). [5] The Romanian industry, of course, even if it’s mostly private, falls in a period of profound crisis and difficult times (financial blockages, a lack of markets both for the “inputs” and the “outputs”, price rises, etc.), a context in which the production capacities’ usage is an extremely reduced one (30-40% of the capacity, and in some cases even less), the equipments’ maintenance isn’t a priority
in the top managers’ concerns. The present uncertainties involving many industrial companies’ future, considering the
current economic and financial crisis, the state of confusion that still prevails in the economy generates, in fact, the same situation, meaning the maintenance works’ limitation to the basics in order to reduce the production costs.