Abstract

Chris and Fred discuss about what happens when we ‘defer’ maintenance … or do it later … or perhaps never. When is it OK to do this?

Key Points

Join Chris and Fred as they discuss the concept of deferring maintenance. Sometimes it is OK. Usually it is not.

Topics include:

• Can we defer maintenance? Yes … if an analysis of how your system accumulates damage suggests you should. But if you are deferring maintenance to simply balance a budget … future budgets will suffer. A lot.
• Importance and urgency. What is the most important thing when it comes to how maintenance supports reliability? … preventing failures. This saves time and money. It also means we get better outputs. What is the most urgent thing? … depends who you ask. Organizations that do this well make the important thing the most urgent thing. The least important thing is saving money this week (at the expense of saving LOTS of money later on). What is your organization like?
• Don’t forget human motivations. Jackson Mississippi currently has no potable water. Why? Because maintenance was ‘deferred’ for decades. The people who continually deferred maintenance are generally not in the organization anymore. One could argue that they are not motivated to have made the unpopular (but right) decisions when they had the chance to do it.
• The 2nd law of thermodynamics has never been defeated. This law essentially outlines how every part of the universe will eventually move toward a state of ‘disorder.’ Molecules will become more and more mixed. Things that we have spent a lot of time manufacturing (i.e. being ‘ordered’ in a way that the design dictates) will inevitably fail. But sometimes if it has been working for the last day, week, month or year … we can convince ourselves that it will always keep working.

Enjoy an episode of Speaking of Reliability. Where you can join friends as they discuss reliability topics. Join us as we discuss topics ranging from design for reliability techniques to field data analysis approaches.

SOR 801 Deferred Maintenance in the NewsChristopher Jackson

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