Maintenance:
Availability vs. Costs

When defining maintenance policy and even more during budget construction, the costs of maintenance must be balanced between the acceptable expenses and the requirements.

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

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.