Maintenance Planning in a Saudi Arabian Hospital

Abstract

Any organization needs maintenance activities on a regular basis to ensure safe and effective operations of its essential facilities. This is particularly true for a hospital where the primary concern is to provide a safe healthcare environment for patients. However, due to the high-risk nature of the operations involved, the maintenance department of a hospital has to develop means of ensuring equipment are operational as any unplanned interruption could adversely affect patient life. This means that potential risks contributing to equipment failure have to be identified and reduced or eliminated. Maintenance activities consume resources, it is therefore important to evaluate different maintenance approaches so that a solution that is fit-for-the-purpose can be implemented to meet specific key performance targets. Several research papers have discussed how optimization of maintenance methodologies may help to improve maintenance organization and reduce costs, thus ensuring long-term sustainability. Three important maintenance management concepts have been identified as suitable options to aid healthcare facility management. These options are Total Preventive Maintenance (TPM), Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) and Reliability Centred Failure Analysis (RCFA).The aim of this project is to understand past and current maintenance-related issues, to assess how they impact on business operations, and to identify a means to improve maintenance operations in Saudi hospitals through the development of a new framework incorporating aspects of the three concepts mentioned. Review of applications of engineering management theory and practice and their mapping from the industry sector to the healthcare sector have highlighted a number of key issues which require detailed consideration, namely management policies, working environment, social culture, working culture and decision support systems among others. It became apparent that the framework will need to include a different maintenance performance measurement structure appropriate for hospital environment using approaches including high and low level performance indicators, Six Sigma and Theory of Constraints (TOC).