1. Indicators: maintenance management tools

1.1 Continuous improvement

Maintenance is a complex process, because the decisions taken have multiple effects, all of which are fraught with uncertainty, and which generally become apparent after a certain time lag. Deferring preventive maintenance tasks, for example, can trigger failure mechanisms (corrosion, fatigue, etc.) with long-term consequences that are often difficult to assess. Add to this the fact that operating situations sometimes evolve rapidly, thus modifying the kinetics of these failure mechanisms, and it's easy to understand why maintenance managers feel in something of an "open loop". The performance of the maintenance strategies they choose is neither easily nor quickly measurable, depriving them of the opportunity to correct or adjust them effectively....