Abstract
Organisations nowadays are placing more emphasis on availability and reliability of systems, including safety in production plants. The uptime of production systems substantially contributes to an organisation’s productiveness, and the organisation's ability to become or remain competitive; for this reason, maintenance is now known to be compulsory and necessary. Companies are now changing their organisational maintenance policy from that of being reactive to more preventative strategies. This research was conducted at ArcelorMittal South Africa, which is situated in Vanderbijlpark, Gauteng province. The research aims to address the issues concerning maintenance that are occurring at ArcelorMittal South Africa, through assessing the maintenance planning policy which is being applied at the ArcerlorMittal plant so that the organisation can move toward a more preventative environment. Currently, the organisation has an operative preventative maintenance policy, though the failures and unplanned system stoppages are initiating maintenance to arise in a reactive approach. The research further aims to draw forward aspects that contribute to poor preventative maintenance planning. The study outlined three research objectives: (1) to determine the period in which preventative maintenance could have been conducted by reviewing the system's failure data; (2) to identify the requirements for enhancing machine reliability; and (3) to assess how often preventative maintenance is being performed at the organisation. The study followed a case study approach whereby different methods had been used to gather data, including direct observation through means of an internship at the organisation, use of questionnaire, and a review of secondary data. 52 questionnaires were distributed and collected, which was analysed through descriptive statistical analysis. The secondary data consisted of a review of system failures within 25507 hours, which was analysed through the assistance of Reliability indicators and a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) was performed on the reviewed data. The research revealed that there are excessive maintenance activities that are being conducted in the organisation, and this has negatively affected machine availability, whereby the system availability stands at 67.86 %. Although, communication between the maintenance and production departments is satisfactory, improvements iii are required as the maintenance department is not consulted when new equipment is to be purchased, and this would aid in moving towards a more preventative approach. The research further revealed that good spare parts management and total productive maintenance positively affect machine availability. It is hoped that the recommendations within the study, together with skill, attributes and experience in the maintenance area at ArcelorMittal will function as a bridge when developing and improving the organisation to reach the desired state, of an environment which is proactive.
M.Tech. (Operations Management)