Abstract
Regardless of the overhaul outages planned with the aim of preventing failures on the energy plants in South Africa, it is witnessed not to be effective based on the production ratio outcomes. The production ratio as per the South African power enterprise is 80:10:10. The ratio is based on 80 % availability, a fixed 10% planned maintenance and 10 % unplanned maintenance. Consequently, the concept of preventative maintenance has become a buzz phrase amongst scholars and industry practitioners, even though, preventative maintenance is attaining a higher level of significance in well developed countries, such as America and China due to its ability to smoothening the energy sector. In Africa, particularly in South Africa the integration and adoption of the concept of preventative maintenance is phasing challenges. To date, over the past decades several studies have been led to investigate the benefit of preventative maintenance implementation in the energy sector at global level. However, very few investigative studies concerning the implementation and adoption of preventative maintenance in the South African energy generation sources have been conducted, hence the overall objective of this paper is to fill this gap by means of critically analyzing studies that were conducted or developed in the field of preventive maintenance over the past two decades. The outcome of the analysis of the existing literature on preventative maintenance clearly illustrates that there are flaws in the current body of knowledge related to a lack of sufficient studies in the context of South African electricity sector.