A functional approach to maintenance

To underline the role played by maintenance in a company's operations, the profession commonly uses the term "maintenance function". This is the title of the X60-000 documentation booklet published by Afnor , which serves as an introduction to the collection of French industrial maintenance standards. In fact, maintenance is a vital function, since without it, any industrial process will cease, usually within a short space of time, to produce the goods or services for which it was designed. We can add that, while it consumes resources, maintenance above all creates value.

However, in an open market, creating added value is no longer enough; you have to be competitive. In particular:

• The life cycle of an investment must be considered from the outset of a project, taking into account all the costs associated with maintenance activities, so as to avoid incurring expenses whose benefits would not be properly evaluated;

• we need to control costs and find the best possible efficiency during the production phase;

• we need to break down the barriers between professions and show everyone the part their actions play in achieving overall objectives.

Logically, then, maintenance has its place in the design of a plant, in its operation, and in the organization of the company.

You have to optimize. Constantly, because the optimum varies and is nothing other than a compromise between different criteria and constraints, which themselves evolve, and as such it remains somewhat subjective. Pursuing it requires a continuous search for improvement: ever greater efficiency and performance, and ever fewer malfunctions. To achieve this, the company's various functions are called upon, and the maintenance function in particular.

It is often assigned the role of limiting the effects of "entropy" (aging, wear and tear, fatigue, and other physico-chemical alterations). But this vision is somewhat reductive, focusing more on finding ways to avoid damage (the how) than on the reasons for doing so (the why). As a result, it sometimes seems more interested in finding ways to improve the reliability of assets, than in identifying what needs to be improved. Maintaining no longer means keeping in good condition, but rather achieving objectives. More broadly speaking, it could be said that, along with the other functions, the role of maintenance consists, not exclusively but primarily, in maximizing the profit to be made from an...