Abstract
The performance and competitiveness of manufacturing companies is dependent on the reliability,
availability and productivity of their facilities. To ensure the plant performance achievability, maintenance
managers need to have a good understanding about the maintenance systems’ effectiveness. The company
understudy had been experiencing frequent breakdowns of critical machines, which negatively affected
productivity. The researchers set objectives to establish the causes of machine breakdown, determine the level of
plant utilization and availability, evaluate the percentage of sales lost due to downtime and determine the level
of Mean-Time To Repair (MTTR). The hypothesis tests developed were based on the mentioned objectives as
the major indicators of maintenance effectiveness. Direct observations, structured interviews, company records
and published work were used to collect data. Spreadsheet modelling and Mega Stat were used for analysing the
data. The results came double folded indicating that breakdown maintenance was not effective as it underutilized
the plant’s equipment, lowered plant availability, decreased the sales and increased the level of MTTR.