Abstract
M.Phil (Engineering Management)
The importance of an effective maintenance programme cannot be over-emphasized
because such a programme plays such an important role in the effectiveness of lean
manufacturing. Maintenance may be considered the health care of any engineering
equipment and its equipment. It is required to reduce waste effectively, and to run an
efficient, continuous locomotive operation within a business or service operation. The
cost of regular maintenance is very small when it is compared to the cost of a major
breakdown at which time production is held up. The main purpose of regular
maintenance is to ensure that all equipment required for production is operating at
100% efficiency at all times. Through short daily inspections, cleaning, lubricating,
and making of minor adjustments, minor problems can be detected and corrected
before they become major problems that can shut down a production line. A good
maintenance programme requires company-wide participation and support by
everyone from top executives to shop floor personnel (Dale, 2008)
The function of reliability engineering is to develop the reliability requirements for a
product, establish an adequate reliability programme, and perform appropriate
analyses and tasks to ensure that the product meets its requirements. These tasks
are managed by a reliability engineer who usually holds an accredited engineering
degree and has additional reliability-specific education and training. Reliability
engineering is closely associated with maintainability engineering and logistics
engineering. Many problems from other fields can also be tackled using reliability
engineering techniques (O’Connor 2010).
Reliability is defined as the probability that a device will perform its required function
under stated conditions for a specific period of time, and quality can be defined as
how the recipient of the product or service views the product (Barringer, 2006).
Therefore the two cannot be viewed differently as they both have the same focus
which is the end result of the product’s performance. The findings reveal that
customers should form part of reliability management systems; the development of
ways to identify possible failure before it actually happens is key in achieving
reliability targets; and training of key personnel on engineering and quality
department as well as resource planning and utilization is a key towards eliminating
reliability challenges.