Reliability and Maintainability of Machinery and Equipment, Part 2: Benchmarking, Life-Cyclecost, and Predictive Maintenance

Abstract

This article is the second of two that review some of the practical machinery reliability and maintainability (R&M) activities. Adhering to these R&M activities can help the builders and users of capital-intensive machineries to improve their uptime and reduce their maintenance costs. The articles are collections of some of the published work of the author, based on fifteen years of consulting work with the automotive industry. The topics covered in the first part included accessibility of machinery and assessing machine tool builder’s R&M practices. The topics covered in the second part include benchmarking best maintainability practices, cost-effectiveness of predictive maintenance, and equipment life-cycle cost analysis. These articles review the contemporary subjects on R&M. In addition, a case study is presented that offers a road map to purchasing more reliable machinery and means of maintaining it more efficiently.