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Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2001) 17:692–703

 2001 Springer-Verlag London Limited

An Integrated Maintenance Management System for an Advanced


Manufacturing Company
P. Y. L. Tu1, R. Yam2, P. Tse2 and A. O. W. Sun2
1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand; and 2Department of
Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Maintenance costs in advanced manufacturing companies, in the main factory in Hong Kong. The main manufacturing
e.g. electronics manufacturing companies, have been steadily processes in this factory include:
increasing as the companies upgrade their production facili-
ties. Maintenance costs are normally a considerable portion 1. Wafer backgrinding process. The factory’s wafer backgrind-
of the product cost. To maintain a competitive place in the ing line has two backgrinding stations. Each of these stations
market, it is critical for an advanced manufacturing company is equipped with one fully automatic backgrinding system,
to have a sound maintenance management system, which can a semi-tool wafer cleaning station and a protective tape
control its maintenance costs at the lowest level and maintain mounting system. The main defects in this process, which
its overall equipment effectiveness at the highest level. This often cause maintenance problems, include chuck vacuum
paper reports on an integrated maintenance management sys- loss, Z-axis error, malfunction of robot arm, and water
tem, which has been developed and implemented in an pump malfunction.
advanced electronics manufacturing company in Hong Kong. 2. Wafer mounting process. There are 7 wafer mounting
The methods and principles of the system are discussed in machines installed in the factory to constitute the wafer
sections on maintenance performance auditing, cost recording mounting line. These machines are grouped into three wafer
and tracing, reliability centred maintenance planning and con- mounting stations. All the wafer mounting machines are
trol, condition monitoring and on-line feedback control, and semi-automatic, which require manual loading of wafers
integrated maintenance planning and control. prior to mounting. In this process, frequent defects include
scratching the wafer and bubbles at the back of the wafer.
Keywords: Computer-aided maintenance management (CAMM); 3. Dicing saw process. There are three dicing saw stations
Integrated maintenance management (IMM); Terotechnology; with a total of 16 saw machines in the dicing saw process
Total productive maintenance (TPM) line. The frequency of machine failure in this process is
comparatively higher than in other processes. These machine
failures include: axial error, water pump failure, water leak-
1. Introduction age, electronic board failure, clogged water supply tube,
contamination, chip/crack quality problem, die off problem,
This work was supported by the strategic research grant of the and saw on die.
City University of Hong Kong and was carried out in an 4. Die attaching process. There are 32 die attaching machines
advanced electronics manufacturing company in Hong Kong. in the factory. These die attaching machines are grouped
For commercial reasons, we omit the name of company. The into two workstations, which are allocated on two different
main products of the company are various semiconductor inte- shop floors. The die attaching process stations are bottle-
grated circuit chips. The company has 12 branches or sales necks in the production, since the machines have longer
offices distributed worldwide. Its main manufacturing plant and set-up times and must be operated by highly skilled workers.
the head office are in Hong Kong. The work was carried out However, these machines have a higher reliability and the
breakdown rate of the whole station is relatively low com-
pared with the breakdown rates in the other processes. The
Correspondence and offprint requests to: P. Y. L. Tu, Department of
frequent maintenance problems include epoxy on die/lead,
Mechanical Engineering, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, misplaced die, and jamming lead-frame. These machine
Christchurch, New Zealand. E-mail: p.tu!mech.canterbury.ac.nz faults are mainly the result of operators’ mistakes, such as
An Integrated Maintenance Management System 693

improper storage of the dispensing nozzle and improper run-to-failure maintenance policy. Most maintenance
machine set-up. resources were spent on unexpected corrective/emergency
5. Epoxy curing process. There are three epoxy curing pro- maintenance or repairs. There is almost no pre-planning and
cesses which are carried out in 28 programmable controlled scheduling of its maintenance activities. The maintenance
curing ovens. These are the most highly used manufacturing department manager simply prioritises the maintenance
process in the factory. However, these ovens are quite requests (or work orders) according to the influence of the
stable. The only trouble is temperature fluctuation. This is failures upon the production.
mainly due to the improper set-up of the ovens, which is 6. The maintenance cost was difficult to control. Subcontracts
normally caused by mistakes by the operators. were simply sent out when the maintenance staff believed
they could not solve the problems. The use of these external
The company has experienced a steady increase of maintenance
services or subcontracts resulted in the fact that the break-
cost associated with its upgrade of the production equipment
down times of the failed facilities were out of the company’s
and automation level. The main problems in the company’s
control since these external service groups normally have
maintenance management include:
their own schedule and cannot guaranty an immediate ser-
1. The major manufacturing machines in the above-mentioned vice.
processes are very efficient and have a high productivity
According to our investigations in other industries, e.g. Central
rate. Any breakdowns will result in a high production loss.
Textile (HK) Ltd [1] and China Light and Power Co. Ltd [2],
This leads to a high indirect maintenance cost. The high
as well as through a literature review, the above problems are
machine efficiency leads the company to use a simply run-
also common for other advanced manufacturing companies
to-failure maintenance policy, since the company believes
with high production automation levels and complex production
that preventive maintenance activities, particularly those
facilities. Therefore, the work described in this paper is not
involving shutdown, will reduce the average productivity of
only a solution for solving the problems in the company
the production system.
investigated, but is also a useful reference for building an
2. Most manufacturing facilities in the company are compli- integrated maintenance management system for a wider rage
cated computer-controlled machines. To maintain and repair of advanced manufacturing companies.
these machines is very costly and time consuming. Some
of the maintenances and repairs must be subcontracted to
the vendors or special service agencies or companies. This
leads to an increase of the direct maintenance cost.
3. Through an investigation in the company, we found that 2. Literature Review
most of the malfunctions or emergency maintenance requests
occurring in the machines are predictable and can be avoided There are many papers and reports in the area of equipment
by pre-planned maintenance operations. The axial problem diagnosis and maintenance management. Previous projects have
on the dicing saw machine, for instance, can be avoided addressed various problems on maintenance management and
by periodic lubrication and cleaning, in order to avoid a equipment diagnosis. However, as equipment diagnosis is not
jammed axis and a burnt-out driver PCB board. Mechanical the main focus in this paper, we have only summarised this
problems on the wafer mounter could be avoided by periodic work on maintenance management as follows, and, in parti-
adjustment of mechanical parts and cleaning of dust from cular, recent developments.
the speed controller so that overloading or damaging oper- In February 1992, a EUREKA [3] project was initiated that
ations could be eliminated. attempted to benchmark maintenance in Scandinavian countries.
4. No clear maintenance objectives have been defined in the Participating countries were Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and
company. The only measurement of its maintenance man- Finland. Denmark served as the liaison country. Some key
agement and practice is the overall equipment effectiveness Nordic maintenance societies participated, such as the Danish
(OEE), which is defined as the percentage of time that a Maintenance Association, the Finnish Maintenance Society, the
production system is producing defect-free products. This Swedish Maintenance Society, and the Norwegian Society of
measurement is useful from the productivity point of view, Maintenance Engineers. Through the EUREKA project, the key
but it does not indicate the performance of the maintenance templates for maintenance in different types of manufacturing
department. For instance, sometimes the average OEE was companies were developed. These key templates can be used
very high and the maintenance department was in fact by companies to
underloaded, whereas sometimes the OEE was lower, but, 1. Pinpoint new areas of maintenance work.
in fact, the maintenance department had carried out many 2. Compare their own efforts and results with those of the
jobs to maintain and repair the facilities. The maintenance others.
department in the company was frequently running either
underloaded or in a ‘fire fighting’ situation. 3. Establish new maintenance goals.
5. Since 1995, the company has implemented a total productive Wireman [4] conducted a similar maintenance benchmark
maintenance (TPM) strategy, together with its total quality survey in the USA and found that maintenance costs for
management strategy. However, when we went to the com- industrial firms in the USA have risen by 10–15% per year
pany, we found, in practice, that the company adopted a since 1979. Unfortunately, the total “waste” in excessive main-
694 P. Y. L.Tu et al.

tenance expenditure was approximately 200 billion dollars in for automatic diagnosis has been developed using a Baysian
1990, which equalled the total maintenance costs in 1979. probability network [21].
A recent study of maintenance management practices shows Tse and Tam [22] suggested that condition-based fault diag-
that there are three major problems facing many modern nosis and the prediction of equipment deterioration trends
engineering plants [5]: were vital in maintenance management approaches. Condition
monitoring, intelligent condition-based fault diagnosis [23] and
1. How to pre-plan and pre-schedule maintenance work for the prediction of the trend of equipment deterioration must be
sophisticated equipment in complex operating environments? integrated to provide a comprehensive decision support system
2. How to reduce high inventory costs for spare parts? for maintenance management [24]. Tu and Fung [2] developed
3. How to avoid the risk of catastrophic failure and eliminate a computerised condition-based preventive maintenance activity
unplanned forced outage of equipment systems? scheduling system for a power generation company. In the
same power generation company, Yam et al. [25] further
To deal with the above-mentioned problems in advanced mod- developed an initial model of an intelligent predictive decision
ern engineering plants, a number of computational tools have support system for condition based maintenance.
been developed to computerise decision support systems (DSS) After reviewing the current maintenance management prac-
for supporting maintenance management decisions. The tools tices, we find that extensive work has been carried out on the
include knowledge base [6,7], analytic hierarchy process [8,9], applications of various artificial intelligence technologies and
Petri nets [10], neural networks [11,12], fuzzy logic and fuzzy computer technology in maintenance decision support and man-
networks [13,14], and Bayesian theory [15–17]. These compu- agement. However, very little work has been carried out on
tational tools have caused DSS systems to become more intelli- how to establish an integrated maintenance management sys-
gent incorporating the normative power of analytic techniques. tem. This paper aims to develop a reference model for an
Today, research in DSS has generally evolved with respect to integrated maintenance management system through an indus-
three perspectives: design, application and technology [18]. trial case study.
The design perspective places emphasis on the development
of methodologies and strategies spreading over the whole
process from problem recognition and analysis through system 3. Maintenance Performance Auditing
specifications to computer implementation. The application
issue focuses on the use of DSS by individuals and groups. The As mentioned in Section 1, one of the major problems with
technology perspective focuses on man–machine interaction the company’s maintenance management is the lack of clear
and development of software environments. The fundamental objectives. This problem has led the company to misuse its
research issue in building an intelligent decision support system limited maintenance resources. The situation in the company
(IDSS) involves linking the domain-specific knowledge of was that some equipment was over-maintained, whereas other
experts with the normative power of analytic decision tech- critical production facilities were under-maintained. Some areas
niques to improve the quality of decisions. in maintenance management were investigated too much and
In the last decade, some research results of DSS in industry- some other areas were ignored. Formerly, the company had
based maintenance have been published. Rao et al. [19] first tried to implement well-known maintenance philosophies or
proposed the concept of an intelligent maintenance support techniques, such as terotechnology [26], TPM [27], preventive
system (IMSS) architecture for air-traffic control. The primary maintenance, and condition based predictive maintenance. It
objective of their work is to use an interdisciplinary approach seemed that these philosophies or techniques did not handle
for identifying the opportunity for applying existing and emerg- the problems well. Hence, the company simply adopted a
ing technologies to facilitate the automation of maintenance run-to-failure maintenance strategy plus fixed time preventive
support operations for air-traffic control facilities. An IMSS maintenance, which resulted in a nearly out-of-control “fire-
framework was developed, which includes several individual fighting” situation. To help the company to clarify its mainte-
expert systems, numerical processing programs. In 1996, Zhu nance objectives, we developed an auditing process and sug-
[20] presented an integrated intelligent management support gested that the company carry out this process regularly every
system with sensor-based condition monitoring for a mining two to three months. The auditing process is shown in Table 1.
truck. In this system, sensor measurement, data processing, As shown in Table 1, 15 areas were identified that need to
knowledge-based intelligent systems and software implemen- be audited so that the company can find its weak areas in
tation are integrated to provide support for maintenance man- maintenance management and practice, and thereafter clearly
agement. Indicative information and early warning about the define or modify its maintenance objectives from time to time.
health of the components of a system are acquired through These 15 areas are interrelated. Area 1, the productivity index,
appropriate sensor measurement and monitoring. Tu and Yeung is an overall indicator of the effectiveness of a maintenance
[1] used a Bayesian probability network to develop a prototype system, which is affected by all other areas. The interactions
of an intelligent decision support system (IDSS) for a mainte- and interrelationships also exist between other areas, which are
nance management system in a textile compny. In this IDSS illustrated in Fig. 1. As shown in Fig. 1, the other 14 areas
prototype, the cost, quality, and production efficiency were are grouped into three main domains, i.e. the three big wheels
taken into account for making decisions on maintenance activi- in Fig. 1: organisation, management, and technology. The
ties. The maintenance knowledge of experts was collected and wheel indicates the integration and interrelation of the areas
expressed as conditional probabilities. An inference engine in a particular domain.
An Integrated Maintenance Management System 695

Table 1. Maintenance management auditing process.

Areas Check points Measuring


method

1. Productivity index Utilisation × Performance × Quality rating M


2. Organisation, staffing and policy Organisation perception, job description, supervisory supporting, peers’ M, Q
supporting, staffing policy, satisfaction
3. Management training Training plan, training coverage, training forms, company’s support M, Q
4. Planner training Planner/estimator function, training plan, the contents of maintenance M, Q
plan, company’s support
5. Craft training Training plan, training methods, amount of training, training coverage, Q
company’s support, satisfaction
6. Motivation Job satisfaction, work environment, work skill requirements, conflicts, M, Q
contribution recognition, absentees, percentage of non-productivity
time/total working time
7. Negotiation Employee union, strike, personnel grievances, settlement, satisfaction Q
8. Management control, budgets, and costs Cost estimate methods, effectiveness of budget control, clearness of Q
managerial reports, frequency of managerial reports, effectiveness of
managerial control
9. Work order, planning and scheduling Percentage of planned working time/total working time, ratio of well- M, Q
specified jobs against blanket jobs, enough planning lead-time, clearness
of work orders, ratio of planned shut-downs/emergency shut-downs, job
check and feedbacks
10. Facilities Clearness of equipment allocation, housekeeping, working convenience, M, Q
maintainability, availability
11. Stores, material and tool control Effectiveness of inventory control of spare parts, consumed materials, M
and tools, against holding cost
12. Preventive maintenance and equipment history Equipment history record, data checking frequency, frequency and M
effectiveness of preventive maintenance routines
13. Reliability centred maintenance Use and effectiveness of this technique M, Q
14. Condition-based predictive maintenance Use and effectiveness of this technique M, Q
15. Data processing On-line computer support, effectiveness and accuracy of data processing M, Q

M, manager’s marking; Q, through anonymous questionnaire survey

On the auditing sheets, each area consists of one to dozens 4. Cost Recording and Tracing
of checking points, and each of these checking points was
rated from 0 to 10. Different weights were assigned to these The type of maintenance budget required by a company man-
checking points according the influence of these points upon agement depends on the administrative structure of the com-
the production and maintenance cost. A weighted average mark pany. If a company uses a centralised maintenance structure, a
from all checking points in an area will be the mark for the company-wide budget will be required. Otherwise, a distributed
area. A polygraph is used to show the results of the auditing budgeting scheme would be more suitable. Since the company
process. Figure 2, for instance, shows the results of the auditing uses a centralised maintenance structure, we focused our
process in October 1997. research on the methods for company-wide budgeting and
According to Fig. 2 and Table 1, we find that the weak cost control.
areas in the company in October 1997 were: Area 1 – pro- A company-wide maintenance budget can be built up from
ductivity index (4); Area 4 – planner training (0); Area 9 – the budget for each plant or workshop. Budgeting, predicative,
work order, planning and scheduling (3.8); Area 13 – reliability preventive, or project work is normally straightforward. How-
centred maintenance (3); Area 14 – condition-based predicative ever, budgeting corrective and emergency maintenance cost is
maintenance. These weak areas indicated that the company had very difficult owing to its randomness. In fact, corrective and
a poor ability to plan and schedule its maintenance activities. emergency maintenance was the main factor in the steady
This poor planning and scheduling ability resulted in a lower increase of the company’s maintenance cost, and hence, to the
productivity index owing to a large number of unexpected company’s maintenance budget becoming out of control.
breakdowns. This was the main spur for starting this research. Through our work, we found that this problem could be tackled
696 P. Y. L.Tu et al.

5. Reliability Centred Maintenance


Planning and Control

Traditionally, the company adopted a simple fixed time interval


preventive maintenance policy. Following this policy, the
company had the troubles of over-maintainance and under-
maintainance. This was because, according to the pre-planned
maintenance schedule, some machines had to be maintained
although they were running well and did not need such preven-
tive maintenance, whereas some other machines had to wait
for their turn, even if these machines needed immediate service.
The over-maintained facilities wasted the company’s limited
maintenance resources, and the under-maintained facilities
increased the company’s corrective and emergency mainte-
nance, and hence, the maintenance costs. To solve this problem,
a reliability centred maintenance planning and control method,
and a condition monitoring and on-line feedback control
method (to be discussed in Section 6) were developed for
the company.
The reliability centred maintenance planning and control
method was developed based on a Weibull distribution. In the
Fig. 1. The integrated overview of the auditing areas. following, a case of a die attaching machine is used to illustrate
the principle of this model.
First, a group of data, which are times to failure, were
collected from a non-replacement lift test, which was carried
out on the same group of die bonders. In total, 10 components
were checked, i.e. sample size equals to 10. The data have
been ranked as median rank value, calculated using the follow-
ing formula and shown in Table 2:
F(ti) = 100[(i−0.3)/(n+0.4)] (1)
where, i is the number of failures and n is the sample size.
In terms of the data in Table 2, we can plot a line on a
Weibull distribution function graph sheet (See Fig. A1 in the
Appendix) and obtain the following approximate parameters:
1. Estimated MTTF (mean time to failure) ! = 1820 h by
estimator 63.2% cumulative failure.
Fig. 2. Polygraph of the maintenance management auditing process in
October 1997.
2. Characteristic life " = 2000 h with 59% cumulative failure.
3. Shape # = 1.4.
These parameters provide a statistic reference for scheduling
by a company wide systematic approach rather than by a single preventive maintenance. In general, a machine with longer
maintenance strategy or technique. However, a cost control MTTF will have a longer time interval between two consecu-
model, which can be used to record and classify the mainte- tive planned maintenances. However, the company cannot
nance costs, is the important first step in solving this problem. schedule its preventive or predicative maintenances only
Figure 3 shows the maintenance cost control model, which according to the MTTF. Some other factors must also be taken
was developed for the company. into account, such as risk, production loss due to machine
As shown in Fig. 3, the inputs to the model are various breakdown, and expected maintenance cost. A preventive main-
maintenance expenditures or losses due to machine breakdowns. tenance scheduling model, which incorporates MTBF (mean
The outputs of the model are well-classified maintenance costs. time between failures), risk and production loss, was developed
The history records of the unplanned maintenance costs can by Tu and Fung [2]. For the detailed description of this model,
help the company to make a more accurate estimate of its please refer to [2]. In this work, we extended this model to
maintenance budget. Furthermore, these unexpected mainte- include the estimated maintenance cost (or expected mainte-
nance costs can be used by the company as a useful indicator nance cost). Therefore, in the following, we simply demonstrate
for measuring its maintenance management system. These dif- how to calculate the expected maintenance cost by the same
ferent types of maintenance cost are recorded in the company’s method as above.
database or plant EDB together with the maintenance work The expected maintenance cost is an important parameter
order/request records. for the company to deploy its limited maintenance resources
An Integrated Maintenance Management System 697

Fig. 3. The maintenance cost control model.

Table 2. Failure data of a die attach machine. Table 3. Hazard rate calculations for the die attaching machine.

Time to failure, ti Cumulative failure rate F(ti) Ni (number of good Time to failure Failure rate, Cumulative
(hours) (%) components at (h) $(t) = 100/ni hazard
beginning of the H(t) = %$(t)
225 6.73 time interval)
510 16.35
805 25.96 10 225 10.00 10.00
1150 35.58 9 510 11.11 21.11
1500 45.19 8 805 12.50 33.61
1800 54.81 7 1150 14.29 47.90
2150 64.42 6 1500 16.67 64.56
2500 74.04 5 1800 20.00 84.56
3100 83.65 4 2150 25.00 109.56
4210 93.27 3 2500 33.33 142.90
2 3100 50.00 192.90
1 4210 100.00 292.90

and plan its preventive maintenance. To calculate the expected


maintenance cost, we must first calculate the hazard rate of
the die attaching machine. The hazard rate calculation is In the company, three types of maintenance are used for the
demonstrated in Table 3. die attaching machine: monthly maintenance; three-month
According to the data in Table 3, we can draw a line on a maintenance; and six-month overall maintenance. The costs for
Weibull hazard distribution graph sheet (See Fig. A2 in the each of these three types of maintenance are given in Table
Appendix). From this line, we can read the cumulative hazard 4. Based on the expected failures as shown above and the unit
probability for a given time, e.g. H(1434 h) = 50%. Hence, costs (i.e. cost per maintenance) as listed in Table 4, the
we can calculate the expected failures within a given time estimated direct maintenance costs for the three types of main-
interval as follows: tenance are calculated.
To calculate the expected maintenance cost, we must add
Expected failures within a month (approximate 630 h) =
the production loss. If we omit the late delivery penalty, a
H(1434) − H(804) = 50% − 33% = 17%
production loss can be calculated by the following equation:
Expected failures within three months (approximate
Production loss = (number of planned maintenances +
2025 h) =
expected failures) (average outage time)(cost per unit
H(2829) − H(804) = 186% − 33% = 153%
time)
Expected failures within six months (approximate
(2)
4050 h) =
H(3853) − H(804) = 285% − 33% = 252% Likewise, we can calculate the expected maintenance costs for
698 P. Y. L.Tu et al.

Table 4. Calculation of estimated annual direct maintenance costs.

Type Unit cost Expected failures Failure cost Planned maintenance Estimated annual
(HK$) (C) (f) (HK$) (Fc = Cf) cost (HK$) (Pc) direct maintenance
cost (HK$)
Fd = Pc + Fc

Monthly 500 0.17 85 12 × 500 = 6000 6085


3-Month 1500 1.53 2695 4 × 1500 = 6000 8295
6-Month 5000 2.52 12 600 2 × 5000 = 10 000 22 600

all the critical production facilities in the company. Based on 6.3 Reliability Analysis
these estimated maintenance costs, it was suggested that the
company should dedicate its limited maintenance resources to Reliability analysis can be carried out by collection of failure
those facilities with higher expected maintenance costs to save data over a period of time and determination the mean time
on the overall maintenance cost. to failure by failure plot or frequency plot.
According to the measuring results obtained from machine
inspections and condition monitoring, using the three basic
methods mentioned above, a suitable maintenance technique
6. Condition Monitoring and On-Line must be chosen if an unusual symptom or a machine failure
Feedback Control is identified. To help the front-line maintenance staff to choose
a proper maintenance technique, we developed an on-line
To improve the effectiveness of the maintenance, a condition feedback decision support system for the company. The flow
monitoring and on-line feedback method was developed and diagram of this decision support system is illustrated in Fig. 4.
implemented in the company. As shown in Fig. 4, this decision support system is able to
First of all, three basic condition monitoring methods were give on-line feedbacks to the maintenance technicians and to
suggested to the company. They are simple inspection, con- guide them to choose a proper maintenance technique. In
dition measurement, and reliability analysis. practice, through using this decision support system, the
decision procedure was shortened considerably. The time saving
is about 40% on average.
6.1 Simple Inspection

Simple inspection is visual inspection or observation during 7. Integrated Maintenance Planning and
machine operation at a fixed time period, a countercheck of a
Control System
machine operation or conditions is taken according to a list of
check points or a memo of inspection. For a die attaching
As mentioned in Section 1, the company had difficulties in
machine, for instance, the check points include:
planning and controlling its maintenance tasks. The company
1. Machine cleanliness. was running in a nearly out-of-control fire-fighting situation.
2. Lubrication film condition. This is also a common problem for other advanced manufactur-
ing companies [1].
3. Mechanical wear due to continuous movement, i.e. roller,
To solve this problem, an integrated maintenance planning
bearing, and guide rod, etc.
and control system was developed. Figure 5 shows the frame-
4. Vibration. work of this control system.
5. Flow control meter condition, i.e. compressed air, dielectric As shown in Fig. 5, the maintenance planning (MP) model
water, cooling water, vacuum meter, and temperature is responsible for generating maintenance schedules for the
recorder. whole plant. The inputs to this model include:
1. Predictive and preventive maintenance schedule generated
6.2 Condition Measurement by the PPMS model (see Fig. 5).
2. Corrective/emergency maintenance requests sent from the
Condition measurement employs special measuring devices, FAMTS model.
such as vibration measurement and analysis equipment, thermo- 3. Production schedule generated by PSC system. As shown
graph, mechanical measurement, and calibration devices. in Fig. 5, the MP model can communicate with the PSC
Through using these measuring devices, some important para- system. Through this interactive communication, the MP
meters of a critical machine can be measured regularly and model is able to insert maintenance activities into production
compared with standards. To identify potential trends or faults, waiting or idle-time intervals or ask the PSC system to
these measurements must be plotted on a statistical control schedule the production tasks to avoid those pre-planned
chart to compare with mean and control limits. shut-down maintenance periods.
An Integrated Maintenance Management System 699

Fig. 4. The flow diagram of the decision support system for selecting a proper maintenance technique.

Fig. 5. Integrated maintenance planning and control system.

4. Maintenance information provided by the MI system accord- The failure analysis and maintenance technique selection
ing to the code of a facility. The information consists of the (FAMTS) model is a decision support model. According to the
facility’s drawings, manuals, spare part inventory, vendor’s machine conditions from the machine inspection and condition
information, and maintenance history. The MP model will monitoring, this model is able to decide whether a maintenance
automatically write or attach the information in a mainte- work order/request is a planned maintenance (i.e. predictive or
nance work order. preventive maintenance) or a corrective or emergency mainte-
700 P. Y. L.Tu et al.

nance. The basic principle employed by the FAMTS model particularly failures resulting from operators’ mistakes.
for selecting a proper maintenance technique has been discussed Although the company still has some problems in handling
in Section 6 (see Fig. 4). In addition to the maintenance emergency maintenance requests, the situation has improved
technique section, the FAMTS model can further make significantly. Through carrying out this project in the company,
suggestions to the MP model on the decisions for in-house some interesting points have been found, which are briefly
maintenance vs. subcontract maintenance, repairing vs. replace- summarised below:
ment, and running maintenance vs. shutdown maintenance,
based on considerations of the company’s maintenance policy 1. The maintenance cost has been steadily increasing and is
and capacity, maintenance costs (including direct and indirect a considerable portion of the product cost in advanced
costs), and failure rates. manufacturing companies owing to the increased application
The predictive/preventive maintenance scheduling (PPMS) of high efficiency and complicated manufacturing facilities.
model is the core of this maintenance planning and control To control the maintenance cost properly seems to be a
system. According to the reliability analysis (see Section 6), potentially important issue for these companies for reducing
the PPMS model can generate a predictive and preventive product costs and hence for gaining a better competitive
maintenance schedule with dynamic time phases instead of the position in the market.
company’s traditional fixed-time maintenance schedule machine 2. In many advanced manufacturing companies, the mainte-
conditions measured by machine inspection and monitoring nance management is simply considered as a second line
using the three basic inspection methods as discussed in Section service and the maintenance staff are used as “fire fighters”.
6, machine maintenance history data from the MI system (see This approach must be altered for these companies to control
Fig. 5), and statistical process control data from the quality their maintenance cost, improve maintenance effectiveness,
control system [1]. This dynamic time phased predictive and and, hence, ensure their productivity.
preventive maintenance schedule will be sent to the MP model 3. The maintenance management must be integrated with the
to make a complete plant maintenance schedule to incorporate company’s other functional departments, such as production
the corrective/emergency maintenance requests and pro- and quality control. It can no longer be considered as a
duction schedule. stand-alone second line service in the company.
According to the plant maintenance schedule, the work 4. Advanced machine inspection techniques (e.g. vibration
order dispatching and control (WODC) model will sequentially analysis, tribology, automatic fault diagnosis, thermo-
dispatch the maintenance work orders to the proper trade dynamic technologies, etc.) and computer technologies (e.g.
groups (i.e. plant maintenance staff, vendors, subcontractors, artificial intelligence, decision support, etc.) are desirable
and service agencies or companies), and control the progress for these companies to achieve a clear prediction of machine
of these issued work orders through reviewing the work conditions and a quick response to a problem in a production
order/request records. The work orders/requests are automati- facility. Shortening the maintenance decision process and
cally recorded and managed by the work order/request record operation is critical so that world-class manufacturing com-
and management (WORRM) model. When two maintenance panies can make a rapid response to customers’ requests.
tasks compete for a limited maintenance resource, e.g. an 5. A computer-aided integrated maintenance management sys-
inserted emergency maintenance competes for the resources tem is needed by these advanced manufacturing companies
with a pre-planned maintenance task, the WODC model will to integrate, schedule, and control their production and main-
determine the priority between the two competing tasks accord- tenance.
ing to the company’s maintenance policy, the influence of the
machine failure or possible outcome upon the production, and The main results of this work are some feasible solutions to
the maintenance cost evaluation. the points mentioned above. These include:
1. A useful auditing process was developed to help the com-
pany to find the weak areas in its maintenance management
8. Conclusions and practice. Hence, the company can now clearly define its
maintenance objectives and properly deploy its maintenance
The principles, methods and developed system as discussed in
resources to focus on these weak areas.
this paper have been fully implemented in the company. So
far, the company has achieved a considerable maintenance cost 2. The cost control model as discussed in this paper can be
saving and, particularly, has been in a much better position to used as a reference model for advanced manufacturing
plan and schedule its maintenance activities. Owing to this companies to clearly record and trace their maintenance
planning ability, the company is now able to schedule most expenditure and production loss for the purpose of rational
of its maintenance activities in the lower production periods, maintenance budgeting and cost saving.
such as, in product change periods, lower production seasons, 3. A reliability centred maintenance cost estimation model can
and production idle-times. Hence, the production loss has allow a company to develop a more realistic maintenance
decreased significantly. Owing to the regular maintenance budget.
auditing exercise and the integrated approach of maintenance 4. Based on the reliability analysis, quality control statistical
management as described in this paper, there is now company data, machine conditions, and machine maintenance history
wide awareness of maintenance problems and objectives. This data, the predictive and preventive maintenance scheduling
has helped the company to reduce the equipment failure rate, model is able to generate a dynamic time-phased predictive
An Integrated Maintenance Management System 701

and preventive maintenance schedule, which helps the com- Modeling and Simulation. Vancouver, BC, Canada pp. 108–114,
pany to avoid over-maintained vs. under-maintained pro- July 1993.
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5. Through applying the integrated maintenance planning and incomplete database systems”, Microcomputers in Civil Engineer-
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12. T. S. Quah, C. L. Tan and B. Srinivasan, “A fuzzy neural-network
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Appendix

Fig. A1. Weibull distribution for the die attaching machine, type PI.
An Integrated Maintenance Management System 703

Fig. A2. Die attaching machine failure plot.

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