Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2001) 17:692703

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,

e.g. electronics manufacturing companies, have been steadily
increasing as the companies upgrade their production facilities. Maintenance costs are normally a considerable portion
of the product cost. To maintain a competitive place in the
market, it is critical for an advanced manufacturing company
to have a sound maintenance management system, which can
control its maintenance costs at the lowest level and maintain
its overall equipment effectiveness at the highest level. This
paper reports on an integrated maintenance management system, which has been developed and implemented in an
advanced electronics manufacturing company in Hong Kong.
The methods and principles of the system are discussed in
sections on maintenance performance auditing, cost recording
and tracing, reliability centred maintenance planning and control, condition monitoring and on-line feedback control, and
integrated maintenance planning and control.
Keywords: Computer-aided maintenance management (CAMM);
Integrated maintenance management (IMM); Terotechnology;
Total productive maintenance (TPM)

1. Introduction
This work was supported by the strategic research grant of the
City University of Hong Kong and was carried out in an
advanced electronics manufacturing company in Hong Kong.
For commercial reasons, we omit the name of company. The
main products of the company are various semiconductor integrated circuit chips. The company has 12 branches or sales
offices distributed worldwide. Its main manufacturing plant and
the head office are in Hong Kong. The work was carried out

Correspondence and offprint requests to: P. Y. L. Tu, Department of

Mechanical Engineering, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800,
Christchurch, New Zealand. E-mail: p.tumech.canterbury.ac.nz

in the main factory in Hong Kong. The main manufacturing

processes in this factory include:
1. Wafer backgrinding process. The factorys wafer backgrinding line has two backgrinding stations. Each of these stations
is equipped with one fully automatic backgrinding system,
a semi-tool wafer cleaning station and a protective tape
mounting system. The main defects in this process, which
often cause maintenance problems, include chuck vacuum
loss, Z-axis error, malfunction of robot arm, and water
pump malfunction.
2. Wafer mounting process. There are 7 wafer mounting
machines installed in the factory to constitute the wafer
mounting line. These machines are grouped into three wafer
mounting stations. All the wafer mounting machines are
semi-automatic, which require manual loading of wafers
prior to mounting. In this process, frequent defects include
scratching the wafer and bubbles at the back of the wafer.
3. Dicing saw process. There are three dicing saw stations
with a total of 16 saw machines in the dicing saw process
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 leakage, electronic board failure, clogged water supply tube,
contamination, chip/crack quality problem, die off problem,
and saw on die.
4. Die attaching process. There are 32 die attaching machines
in the factory. These die attaching machines are grouped
into two workstations, which are allocated on two different
shop floors. The die attaching process stations are bottlenecks in the production, since the machines have longer
set-up times and must be operated by highly skilled workers.
However, these machines have a higher reliability and the
breakdown rate of the whole station is relatively low compared with the breakdown rates in the other processes. The
frequent maintenance problems include epoxy on die/lead,
misplaced die, and jamming lead-frame. These machine
faults are mainly the result of operators mistakes, such as

An Integrated Maintenance Management System

improper storage of the dispensing nozzle and improper

machine set-up.
5. Epoxy curing process. There are three epoxy curing processes which are carried out in 28 programmable controlled
curing ovens. These are the most highly used manufacturing
process in the factory. However, these ovens are quite
stable. The only trouble is temperature fluctuation. This is
mainly due to the improper set-up of the ovens, which is
normally caused by mistakes by the operators.
The company has experienced a steady increase of maintenance
cost associated with its upgrade of the production equipment
and automation level. The main problems in the companys
maintenance management include:
1. The major manufacturing machines in the above-mentioned
processes are very efficient and have a high productivity
rate. Any breakdowns will result in a high production loss.
This leads to a high indirect maintenance cost. The high
machine efficiency leads the company to use a simply runto-failure maintenance policy, since the company believes
that preventive maintenance activities, particularly those
involving shutdown, will reduce the average productivity of
the production system.
2. Most manufacturing facilities in the company are complicated computer-controlled machines. To maintain and repair
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
most of the malfunctions or emergency maintenance requests
occurring in the machines are predictable and can be avoided
by pre-planned maintenance operations. The axial problem
on the dicing saw machine, for instance, can be avoided
by periodic lubrication and cleaning, in order to avoid a
jammed axis and a burnt-out driver PCB board. Mechanical
problems on the wafer mounter could be avoided by periodic
adjustment of mechanical parts and cleaning of dust from
the speed controller so that overloading or damaging operations could be eliminated.
4. No clear maintenance objectives have been defined in the
company. The only measurement of its maintenance management and practice is the overall equipment effectiveness
(OEE), which is defined as the percentage of time that a
production system is producing defect-free products. This
measurement is useful from the productivity point of view,
but it does not indicate the performance of the maintenance
department. For instance, sometimes the average OEE was
very high and the maintenance department was in fact
underloaded, whereas sometimes the OEE was lower, but,
in fact, the maintenance department had carried out many
jobs to maintain and repair the facilities. The maintenance
department in the company was frequently running either
underloaded or in a fire fighting situation.
5. Since 1995, the company has implemented a total productive
maintenance (TPM) strategy, together with its total quality
management strategy. However, when we went to the company, we found, in practice, that the company adopted a

693

run-to-failure maintenance policy. Most maintenance

resources were spent on unexpected corrective/emergency
maintenance or repairs. There is almost no pre-planning and
scheduling of its maintenance activities. The maintenance
department manager simply prioritises the maintenance
requests (or work orders) according to the influence of the
failures upon the production.
6. The maintenance cost was difficult to control. Subcontracts
were simply sent out when the maintenance staff believed
they could not solve the problems. The use of these external
services or subcontracts resulted in the fact that the breakdown times of the failed facilities were out of the companys
control since these external service groups normally have
their own schedule and cannot guaranty an immediate service.
According to our investigations in other industries, e.g. Central
Textile (HK) Ltd [1] and China Light and Power Co. Ltd [2],
as well as through a literature review, the above problems are
also common for other advanced manufacturing companies
with high production automation levels and complex production
facilities. Therefore, the work described in this paper is not
only a solution for solving the problems in the company
investigated, but is also a useful reference for building an
integrated maintenance management system for a wider rage
of advanced manufacturing companies.

2. Literature Review
There are many papers and reports in the area of equipment
diagnosis and maintenance management. Previous projects have
addressed various problems on maintenance management and
equipment diagnosis. However, as equipment diagnosis is not
the main focus in this paper, we have only summarised this
work on maintenance management as follows, and, in particular, recent developments.
In February 1992, a EUREKA [3] project was initiated that
attempted to benchmark maintenance in Scandinavian countries.
Participating countries were Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and
Finland. Denmark served as the liaison country. Some key
Nordic maintenance societies participated, such as the Danish
Maintenance Association, the Finnish Maintenance Society, the
Swedish Maintenance Society, and the Norwegian Society of
Maintenance Engineers. Through the EUREKA project, the key
templates for maintenance in different types of manufacturing
companies were developed. These key templates can be used
by companies to
1. Pinpoint new areas of maintenance work.
2. Compare their own efforts and results with those of the
others.
3. Establish new maintenance goals.
Wireman [4] conducted a similar maintenance benchmark
survey in the USA and found that maintenance costs for
industrial firms in the USA have risen by 1015% per year
since 1979. Unfortunately, the total waste in excessive main-

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tenance expenditure was approximately 200 billion dollars in

1990, which equalled the total maintenance costs in 1979.
A recent study of maintenance management practices shows
that there are three major problems facing many modern
engineering plants [5]:
1. How to pre-plan and pre-schedule maintenance work for
sophisticated equipment in complex operating environments?
2. How to reduce high inventory costs for spare parts?
3. How to avoid the risk of catastrophic failure and eliminate
unplanned forced outage of equipment systems?
To deal with the above-mentioned problems in advanced modern engineering plants, a number of computational tools have
been developed to computerise decision support systems (DSS)
for supporting maintenance management decisions. The tools
include knowledge base [6,7], analytic hierarchy process [8,9],
Petri nets [10], neural networks [11,12], fuzzy logic and fuzzy
networks [13,14], and Bayesian theory [1517]. These computational tools have caused DSS systems to become more intelligent incorporating the normative power of analytic techniques.
Today, research in DSS has generally evolved with respect to
three perspectives: design, application and technology [18].
The design perspective places emphasis on the development
of methodologies and strategies spreading over the whole
process from problem recognition and analysis through system
specifications to computer implementation. The application
issue focuses on the use of DSS by individuals and groups. The
technology perspective focuses on manmachine interaction
and development of software environments. The fundamental
research issue in building an intelligent decision support system
(IDSS) involves linking the domain-specific knowledge of
experts with the normative power of analytic decision techniques to improve the quality of decisions.
In the last decade, some research results of DSS in industrybased maintenance have been published. Rao et al. [19] first
proposed the concept of an intelligent maintenance support
system (IMSS) architecture for air-traffic control. The primary
objective of their work is to use an interdisciplinary approach
for identifying the opportunity for applying existing and emerging technologies to facilitate the automation of maintenance
support operations for air-traffic control facilities. An IMSS
framework was developed, which includes several individual
expert systems, numerical processing programs. In 1996, Zhu
[20] presented an integrated intelligent management support
system with sensor-based condition monitoring for a mining
truck. In this system, sensor measurement, data processing,
knowledge-based intelligent systems and software implementation are integrated to provide support for maintenance management. Indicative information and early warning about the
health of the components of a system are acquired through
appropriate sensor measurement and monitoring. Tu and Yeung
[1] used a Bayesian probability network to develop a prototype
of an intelligent decision support system (IDSS) for a maintenance management system in a textile compny. In this IDSS
prototype, the cost, quality, and production efficiency were
taken into account for making decisions on maintenance activities. The maintenance knowledge of experts was collected and
expressed as conditional probabilities. An inference engine

for automatic diagnosis has been developed using a Baysian

probability network [21].
Tse and Tam [22] suggested that condition-based fault diagnosis and the prediction of equipment deterioration trends
were vital in maintenance management approaches. Condition
monitoring, intelligent condition-based fault diagnosis [23] and
the prediction of the trend of equipment deterioration must be
integrated to provide a comprehensive decision support system
for maintenance management [24]. Tu and Fung [2] developed
a computerised condition-based preventive maintenance activity
scheduling system for a power generation company. In the
same power generation company, Yam et al. [25] further
developed an initial model of an intelligent predictive decision
support system for condition based maintenance.
After reviewing the current maintenance management practices, we find that extensive work has been carried out on the
applications of various artificial intelligence technologies and
computer technology in maintenance decision support and management. However, very little work has been carried out on
how to establish an integrated maintenance management system. This paper aims to develop a reference model for an
integrated maintenance management system through an industrial case study.

3. Maintenance Performance Auditing

As mentioned in Section 1, one of the major problems with
the companys maintenance management is the lack of clear
objectives. This problem has led the company to misuse its
limited maintenance resources. The situation in the company
was that some equipment was over-maintained, whereas other
critical production facilities were under-maintained. Some areas
in maintenance management were investigated too much and
some other areas were ignored. Formerly, the company had
tried to implement well-known maintenance philosophies or
techniques, such as terotechnology [26], TPM [27], preventive
maintenance, and condition based predictive maintenance. It
seemed that these philosophies or techniques did not handle
the problems well. Hence, the company simply adopted a
run-to-failure maintenance strategy plus fixed time preventive
maintenance, which resulted in a nearly out-of-control firefighting situation. To help the company to clarify its maintenance objectives, we developed an auditing process and suggested that the company carry out this process regularly every
two to three months. The auditing process is shown in Table 1.
As shown in Table 1, 15 areas were identified that need to
be audited so that the company can find its weak areas in
maintenance management and practice, and thereafter clearly
define or modify its maintenance objectives from time to time.
These 15 areas are interrelated. Area 1, the productivity index,
is an overall indicator of the effectiveness of a maintenance
system, which is affected by all other areas. The interactions
and interrelationships also exist between other areas, which are
illustrated in Fig. 1. As shown in Fig. 1, the other 14 areas
are grouped into three main domains, i.e. the three big wheels
in Fig. 1: organisation, management, and technology. The
wheel indicates the integration and interrelation of the areas
in a particular domain.

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695

Table 1. Maintenance management auditing process.

Areas

Check points

Measuring
method

1. Productivity index

Utilisation Performance Quality rating

2. Organisation, staffing and policy

Organisation perception, job description, supervisory supporting, peers

supporting, staffing policy, satisfaction

M, Q

3. Management training

Training plan, training coverage, training forms, companys support

M, Q

4. Planner training

Planner/estimator function, training plan, the contents of maintenance

plan, companys support

M, Q

5. Craft training

Training plan, training methods, amount of training, training coverage,

companys support, satisfaction

6. Motivation

Job satisfaction, work environment, work skill requirements, conflicts,

contribution recognition, absentees, percentage of non-productivity
time/total working time

M, Q

7. Negotiation

Employee union, strike, personnel grievances, settlement, satisfaction

8. Management control, budgets, and costs

Cost estimate methods, effectiveness of budget control, clearness of

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 wellspecified jobs against blanket jobs, enough planning lead-time, clearness
of work orders, ratio of planned shut-downs/emergency shut-downs, job
check and feedbacks

M, Q

10. Facilities

Clearness of equipment allocation, housekeeping, working convenience,

maintainability, availability

M, Q

11. Stores, material and tool control

Effectiveness of inventory control of spare parts, consumed materials,

and tools, against holding cost

12. Preventive maintenance and equipment history

Equipment history record, data checking frequency, frequency and

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, managers marking; Q, through anonymous questionnaire survey

On the auditing sheets, each area consists of one to dozens

of checking points, and each of these checking points was
rated from 0 to 10. Different weights were assigned to these
checking points according the influence of these points upon
the production and maintenance cost. A weighted average mark
from all checking points in an area will be the mark for the
area. A polygraph is used to show the results of the auditing
process. Figure 2, for instance, shows the results of the auditing
process in October 1997.
According to Fig. 2 and Table 1, we find that the weak
areas in the company in October 1997 were: Area 1 productivity index (4); Area 4 planner training (0); Area 9
work order, planning and scheduling (3.8); Area 13 reliability
centred maintenance (3); Area 14 condition-based predicative
maintenance. These weak areas indicated that the company had
a poor ability to plan and schedule its maintenance activities.
This poor planning and scheduling ability resulted in a lower
productivity index owing to a large number of unexpected
breakdowns. This was the main spur for starting this research.

4. Cost Recording and Tracing

The type of maintenance budget required by a company management depends on the administrative structure of the company. If a company uses a centralised maintenance structure, a
company-wide budget will be required. Otherwise, a distributed
budgeting scheme would be more suitable. Since the company
uses a centralised maintenance structure, we focused our
research on the methods for company-wide budgeting and
cost control.
A company-wide maintenance budget can be built up from
the budget for each plant or workshop. Budgeting, predicative,
preventive, or project work is normally straightforward. However, budgeting corrective and emergency maintenance cost is
very difficult owing to its randomness. In fact, corrective and
emergency maintenance was the main factor in the steady
increase of the companys maintenance cost, and hence, to the
companys maintenance budget becoming out of control.
Through our work, we found that this problem could be tackled

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5. Reliability Centred Maintenance

Planning and Control

Fig. 1. The integrated overview of the auditing areas.

Traditionally, the company adopted a simple fixed time interval

preventive maintenance policy. Following this policy, the
company had the troubles of over-maintainance and undermaintainance. 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 preventive maintenance, whereas some other machines had to wait
for their turn, even if these machines needed immediate service.
The over-maintained facilities wasted the companys limited
maintenance resources, and the under-maintained facilities
increased the companys corrective and emergency maintenance, 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
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 following formula and shown in Table 2:
F(ti) = 100[(i0.3)/(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:

Fig. 2. Polygraph of the maintenance management auditing process in

October 1997.

by a company wide systematic approach rather than by a single

maintenance strategy or technique. However, a cost control
model, which can be used to record and classify the maintenance costs, is the important first step in solving this problem.
Figure 3 shows the maintenance cost control model, which
was developed for the company.
As shown in Fig. 3, the inputs to the model are various
maintenance expenditures or losses due to machine breakdowns.
The outputs of the model are well-classified maintenance costs.
The history records of the unplanned maintenance costs can
help the company to make a more accurate estimate of its
maintenance budget. Furthermore, these unexpected maintenance costs can be used by the company as a useful indicator
for measuring its maintenance management system. These different types of maintenance cost are recorded in the companys
database or plant EDB together with the maintenance work
order/request records.

1. Estimated MTTF (mean time to failure) = 1820 h by

estimator 63.2% cumulative failure.
2. Characteristic life = 2000 h with 59% cumulative failure.
3. Shape = 1.4.
These parameters provide a statistic reference for scheduling
preventive maintenance. In general, a machine with longer
MTTF will have a longer time interval between two consecutive planned maintenances. However, the company cannot
schedule its preventive or predicative maintenances only
according to the MTTF. Some other factors must also be taken
into account, such as risk, production loss due to machine
breakdown, and expected maintenance cost. A preventive maintenance scheduling model, which incorporates MTBF (mean
time between failures), risk and production loss, was developed
by Tu and Fung [2]. For the detailed description of this model,
please refer to [2]. In this work, we extended this model to
include the estimated maintenance cost (or expected maintenance cost). Therefore, in the following, we simply demonstrate
how to calculate the expected maintenance cost by the same
method as above.
The expected maintenance cost is an important parameter
for the company to deploy its limited maintenance resources

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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
(hours)

Cumulative failure rate F(ti)

(%)

Time to failure
(h)

Failure rate,
(t) = 100/ni

Cumulative
hazard
H(t) = (t)

225
510
805
1150
1500
1800
2150
2500
3100
4210

6.73
16.35
25.96
35.58
45.19
54.81
64.42
74.04
83.65
93.27

Ni (number of good
components at
beginning of the
time interval)
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1

225
510
805
1150
1500
1800
2150
2500
3100
4210

10.00
11.11
12.50
14.29
16.67
20.00
25.00
33.33
50.00
100.00

10.00
21.11
33.61
47.90
64.56
84.56
109.56
142.90
192.90
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
demonstrated in Table 3.
According to the data in Table 3, we can draw a line on a
Weibull hazard distribution graph sheet (See Fig. A2 in the
Appendix). From this line, we can read the cumulative hazard
probability for a given time, e.g. H(1434 h) = 50%. Hence,
we can calculate the expected failures within a given time
interval as follows:
Expected failures within a month (approximate 630 h) =
H(1434) H(804) = 50% 33% = 17%

In the company, three types of maintenance are used for the

die attaching machine: monthly maintenance; three-month
maintenance; and six-month overall maintenance. The costs for
each of these three types of maintenance are given in Table
4. Based on the expected failures as shown above and the unit
costs (i.e. cost per maintenance) as listed in Table 4, the
estimated direct maintenance costs for the three types of maintenance are calculated.
To calculate the expected maintenance cost, we must add
the production loss. If we omit the late delivery penalty, a
production loss can be calculated by the following equation:

Expected failures within three months (approximate

2025 h) =
H(2829) H(804) = 186% 33% = 153%

Production loss = (number of planned maintenances +

expected failures) (average outage time)(cost per unit
time)

Expected failures within six months (approximate

4050 h) =
H(3853) H(804) = 285% 33% = 252%

(2)
Likewise, we can calculate the expected maintenance costs for

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Table 4. Calculation of estimated annual direct maintenance costs.

Type

Unit cost
(HK$) (C)

Expected failures
(f)

Failure cost
(HK$) (Fc = Cf)

Planned maintenance
cost (HK$) (Pc)

Estimated annual
direct maintenance
cost (HK$)
Fd = Pc + Fc

Monthly
3-Month
6-Month

500
1500
5000

0.17
1.53
2.52

85
2695
12 600

12 500 = 6000
4 1500 = 6000
2 5000 = 10 000

6085
8295
22 600

all the critical production facilities in the company. Based on

these estimated maintenance costs, it was suggested that the
company should dedicate its limited maintenance resources to
those facilities with higher expected maintenance costs to save
on the overall maintenance cost.

6. Condition Monitoring and On-Line

Feedback Control
To improve the effectiveness of the maintenance, a condition
monitoring and on-line feedback method was developed and
implemented in the company.
First of all, three basic condition monitoring methods were
suggested to the company. They are simple inspection, condition measurement, and reliability analysis.

6.3 Reliability Analysis

Reliability analysis can be carried out by collection of failure

data over a period of time and determination the mean time
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
must be chosen if an unusual symptom or a machine failure
is identified. To help the front-line maintenance staff to choose
a proper maintenance technique, we developed an on-line
feedback decision support system for the company. The flow
diagram of this decision support system is illustrated in Fig. 4.
As shown in Fig. 4, this decision support system is able to
give on-line feedbacks to the maintenance technicians and to
guide them to choose a proper maintenance technique. In
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

machine operation at a fixed time period, a countercheck of a
machine operation or conditions is taken according to a list of
check points or a memo of inspection. For a die attaching
machine, for instance, the check points include:
1. Machine cleanliness.
2. Lubrication film condition.
3. Mechanical wear due to continuous movement, i.e. roller,
bearing, and guide rod, etc.
4. Vibration.
5. Flow control meter condition, i.e. compressed air, dielectric
water, cooling water, vacuum meter, and temperature
recorder.
6.2 Condition Measurement

Condition measurement employs special measuring devices,

such as vibration measurement and analysis equipment, thermograph, mechanical measurement, and calibration devices.
Through using these measuring devices, some important parameters of a critical machine can be measured regularly and
compared with standards. To identify potential trends or faults,
these measurements must be plotted on a statistical control
chart to compare with mean and control limits.

7. Integrated Maintenance Planning and

Control System
As mentioned in Section 1, the company had difficulties in
planning and controlling its maintenance tasks. The company
was running in a nearly out-of-control fire-fighting situation.
This is also a common problem for other advanced manufacturing companies [1].
To solve this problem, an integrated maintenance planning
and control system was developed. Figure 5 shows the framework of this control system.
As shown in Fig. 5, the maintenance planning (MP) model
is responsible for generating maintenance schedules for the
whole plant. The inputs to this model include:
1. Predictive and preventive maintenance schedule generated
by the PPMS model (see Fig. 5).
2. Corrective/emergency maintenance requests sent from the
FAMTS model.
3. Production schedule generated by PSC system. As shown
in Fig. 5, the MP model can communicate with the PSC
system. Through this interactive communication, the MP
model is able to insert maintenance activities into production
waiting or idle-time intervals or ask the PSC system to
schedule the production tasks to avoid those pre-planned
shut-down maintenance periods.

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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 according to the code of a facility. The information consists of the
facilitys drawings, manuals, spare part inventory, vendors
information, and maintenance history. The MP model will
automatically write or attach the information in a maintenance work order.

The failure analysis and maintenance technique selection

(FAMTS) model is a decision support model. According to the
machine conditions from the machine inspection and condition
monitoring, this model is able to decide whether a maintenance
work order/request is a planned maintenance (i.e. predictive or
preventive maintenance) or a corrective or emergency mainte-

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nance. The basic principle employed by the FAMTS model

for selecting a proper maintenance technique has been discussed
in Section 6 (see Fig. 4). In addition to the maintenance
technique section, the FAMTS model can further make
suggestions to the MP model on the decisions for in-house
maintenance vs. subcontract maintenance, repairing vs. replacement, and running maintenance vs. shutdown maintenance,
based on considerations of the companys maintenance policy
and capacity, maintenance costs (including direct and indirect
costs), and failure rates.
The predictive/preventive maintenance scheduling (PPMS)
model is the core of this maintenance planning and control
system. According to the reliability analysis (see Section 6),
the PPMS model can generate a predictive and preventive
maintenance schedule with dynamic time phases instead of the
companys traditional fixed-time maintenance schedule machine
conditions measured by machine inspection and monitoring
using the three basic inspection methods as discussed in Section
6, machine maintenance history data from the MI system (see
Fig. 5), and statistical process control data from the quality
control system [1]. This dynamic time phased predictive and
preventive maintenance schedule will be sent to the MP model
to make a complete plant maintenance schedule to incorporate
the corrective/emergency maintenance requests and production schedule.
According to the plant maintenance schedule, the work
order dispatching and control (WODC) model will sequentially
dispatch the maintenance work orders to the proper trade
groups (i.e. plant maintenance staff, vendors, subcontractors,
and service agencies or companies), and control the progress
of these issued work orders through reviewing the work
order/request records. The work orders/requests are automatically recorded and managed by the work order/request record
and management (WORRM) model. When two maintenance
tasks compete for a limited maintenance resource, e.g. an
inserted emergency maintenance competes for the resources
with a pre-planned maintenance task, the WODC model will
determine the priority between the two competing tasks according to the companys maintenance policy, the influence of the
machine failure or possible outcome upon the production, and
the maintenance cost evaluation.

8. Conclusions
The principles, methods and developed system as discussed in
this paper have been fully implemented in the company. So
far, the company has achieved a considerable maintenance cost
saving and, particularly, has been in a much better position to
plan and schedule its maintenance activities. Owing to this
planning ability, the company is now able to schedule most
of its maintenance activities in the lower production periods,
such as, in product change periods, lower production seasons,
and production idle-times. Hence, the production loss has
decreased significantly. Owing to the regular maintenance
auditing exercise and the integrated approach of maintenance
management as described in this paper, there is now company
wide awareness of maintenance problems and objectives. This
has helped the company to reduce the equipment failure rate,

particularly failures resulting from operators mistakes.

Although the company still has some problems in handling
emergency maintenance requests, the situation has improved
significantly. Through carrying out this project in the company,
some interesting points have been found, which are briefly
summarised below:
1. The maintenance cost has been steadily increasing and is
a considerable portion of the product cost in advanced
manufacturing companies owing to the increased application
of high efficiency and complicated manufacturing facilities.
To control the maintenance cost properly seems to be a
potentially important issue for these companies for reducing
product costs and hence for gaining a better competitive
position in the market.
2. In many advanced manufacturing companies, the maintenance management is simply considered as a second line
service and the maintenance staff are used as fire fighters.
This approach must be altered for these companies to control
their maintenance cost, improve maintenance effectiveness,
and, hence, ensure their productivity.
3. The maintenance management must be integrated with the
companys other functional departments, such as production
and quality control. It can no longer be considered as a
stand-alone second line service in the company.
4. Advanced machine inspection techniques (e.g. vibration
analysis, tribology, automatic fault diagnosis, thermodynamic technologies, etc.) and computer technologies (e.g.
artificial intelligence, decision support, etc.) are desirable
for these companies to achieve a clear prediction of machine
conditions and a quick response to a problem in a production
facility. Shortening the maintenance decision process and
operation is critical so that world-class manufacturing companies can make a rapid response to customers requests.
5. A computer-aided integrated maintenance management system is needed by these advanced manufacturing companies
to integrate, schedule, and control their production and maintenance.
The main results of this work are some feasible solutions to
the points mentioned above. These include:
1. A useful auditing process was developed to help the company to find the weak areas in its maintenance management
and practice. Hence, the company can now clearly define its
maintenance objectives and properly deploy its maintenance
resources to focus on these weak areas.
2. The cost control model as discussed in this paper can be
used as a reference model for advanced manufacturing
companies to clearly record and trace their maintenance
expenditure and production loss for the purpose of rational
maintenance budgeting and cost saving.
3. A reliability centred maintenance cost estimation model can
allow a company to develop a more realistic maintenance
budget.
4. Based on the reliability analysis, quality control statistical
data, machine conditions, and machine maintenance history
data, the predictive and preventive maintenance scheduling
model is able to generate a dynamic time-phased predictive

An Integrated Maintenance Management System

and preventive maintenance schedule, which helps the company to avoid over-maintained vs. under-maintained processes resulting from a fixed time maintenance strategy.
5. Through applying the integrated maintenance planning and
control system, as described in this paper, the company is
now able to carry out most of its maintenance activities
under a well-planned and controlled schedule rather than in
the nearly out-of-control fire fighting situation. Furthermore,
through intercommunication and integrated decision making
with the production planning and scheduling system, the
maintenance planning and control system can significantly
reduce production loss by scheduling pre-planned maintenance activities in the production idle- or waiting-time intervals.
Owing to the limited time and research funding, the system
as presented in this paper has not been fully computerised.
Some parts of the system are still being coded by using C++
in the University of Canterbury, and a similar research program
has been carried out in an advanced manufacturing company
in New Zealand.

11.

12.

13.

14.
15.
16.
17.
18.

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Appendix

Fig. A1. Weibull distribution for the die attaching machine, type PI.

An Integrated Maintenance Management System

Fig. A2. Die attaching machine failure plot.

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