Abstract
M.Phil. (Engineering Management)
The current global trends of competitiveness have forced organisations to reconsider the way they are doing business in order to remain competitive. Organisations especially manufacturing industries in most cases formulate very good business blue prints for the business strategy, but more often than not maintenance management is left out in the mix. In order for the organisation to achieve any desired production throughput, maintenance department plays a very important and crucial role in making sure of machine reliability and availability for steady production. Against this background, the focus of this research was to explore how the operations of the maintenance department of Adcock Ingram Critical Care (AICC) manufacturing industry is aligned to the business objectives of the industry, in order to achieving the strategic objectives of the industry. The single site case study methodology of qualitative research was adopted, for it to be capable of exploring the details of the research objectives. The mixed method was adopted as instrument for data collection, which involved the use of structured questionnaire, document analysis and focus group session. The findings from the quantitative analysis showed that the operations of the maintenance department were not positively related toward achieving the strategic objectives of AICC industry. However, the examination of the information in the operational data base, after the introduction of computerised maintenance management system (CMMS) showed appreciable progress being made by the maintenance department in ensuring machine reliability. Furthermore, the result of these analysis was discussed in a focus group (FG) session with the representative of the maintenance department. The participants in the FG session recognised the areas of failure of the maintenance department, which centres on artisans’ attitude to work, ineffective supervision and poor communication with senior management. In order to ameliorate these deficiencies, recommendations were made on staff re-orientation, effective supervision, documentation, timely communication and periodic analysis of the operational information in the CMMS data base.