Characteristics of Maintenance Strategy

While establishing best strategy, the maintenance manager is required to study the following characteristics.

Failure Characteristics

• Mean Time To Fail (MTTF)
• Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)
• Mean Life
• Uncertainty of item life (average, range, standard deviation, Weibull α, β, etc.)
• Detectability of failure (feasibility and possibility of inspection, lead time, etc.)
• Replacement and reparability (MTTR - Mean Time To Repair)

Cost Characteristics

• Cost of preventive actions (Cost of resources, cost of lost output)
• Consequence of failure (damages, lost output, resource cost, quality, etc.)
• Cost of labour on repair
• Cost of spares
• Indirect costs
• Other costs

Safety Characteristics

• Damages to the machine
• Damages to the humans
• Damages to the environment
• Statutory safety regulations

Operating & Production Characteristics

• Process
• Product
• Type of production
• Output
• Resources and their properties
• Quality level

Out of the above characteristics, the last one is not considered in certain organisations while in some other organisations (such as service organisations) it may not physically exist.