Maintenance:
Availability vs. Costs

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Last update: February 16th, 2010
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When defining maintenance policy and even more during budget construction, the costs of maintenance must be balanced between the acceptable expenses and the requirements.


Ciseau couts maintenance

Cost of maintenance vs. indirect costs

In case of maintenance, savings are likely to finish in soaring costs as production stops and turnover is lost because of equipment breakdowns. Conversely, upon a certain level of care, maintenance can be quoted as exagerated, costing more without a counterpart in production performance.

In matter of maintenance budget, the balance must be found between desirable machines and equipment availaibility on one side and acceptable costs on the other side, as shown right.

 

 


Incompressible threshold

disponibilite vs couts

Maintenance costs are limited on one side by the minimum value, the "optimum" balance between availability and direct costs, and a maximum value on the other side (orange zone).

The minimum level of expenses is an incompressible threshold due to impredicable breakdowns that must be repaired regardless to budget management, otherwise production keep being stopped.


Balancing costs and availaiblity

Maintenance costs depend upon maintenance policy and the balance between desirable machine availaiblity and maintenance costs the company is willing to carry.

Couts maintenance vs. disponiblite
False economy

Drastic saving in maintenance are often seen as a short term solution to dire budget problems, yet over a larger span of time, the related resource dilution end up with significant drop of machine and equipment availability. For the same reasons, efficiency of maintenance can no longer be granted.

The return to a normal situation requires often expenses overriding the previous savings..

 

Author, Chris HOHMANN, is managing partner in an international consulting firm.

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