Abstract
Design is considered a renewal process and a tool utilized to realize the desired result. There are many decision-making processes to consider when carrying out design work and, more importantly, how these decisions influence the lifecycle of the equipment in question. The design engineers developing equipment are generally not considered to have vast maintenance experience and require input from maintenance engineers.
The design engineer’s lack of maintenance experience highlights the need for communication between design and maintenance engineers to understand the operational conditions, maintenance requirements, operational characteristics, and sustainability of the systems proposed in the design. Where maintenance is not considered during the design phase, design flaws such as premature failure and inaccessibility. These flaws will result in the equipment not delivering the desired outcome in maintainability, reliability, and high lifecycle costs.
The research aims to identify critical factors to ensure design decision-making's influence on the equipment life cycle and the measure to improve on. Questionnaire responses from selected participants taking up various roles within the engineering industry gave insight into their understanding and experiences on how design decision-making affected equipment lifecycle. Based on the literature reviewed, the key factors discussed in the questionnaire are communication, technical capabilities and requirements, organizational characteristics, lifecycle considerations, and sustainability. The objective is communication between various stakeholders during design decision-making processes to ensure each of the factors highlighted is taken into account to ensure the desired outcome is met, and sustainable equipment lifecycle management is achieved.