Department Production Technology and Organization   Maintenance Engineering

Professor: Prof. Ir. K. Smit

The subject of maintenance engineering and management comprises of 3 areas of attention for education and research:

1. Maintenance management, dealing with the organisation of the maintenance function and the control of maintenance processes, in relation to the operational or production function in industrial enterprises

2. Maintenance technology, directed to realisation of the required or specified maintenance behaviour of technical systems in operation

3. Maintenance engineering, concerned with the design of the maintenance behaviour and the development of all required supporting elements for the future maintenance of technical systems in the engineering stage.

Ad a. Structuring the maintenance organisation and processes are primary areas of attention for improvement and development in industrial enterprises. Effectiveness and efficiency of maintenance processes like workflow, spare parts stock and purchasing, budgets, cost and personnel and the have to be controlled. To improve the control of these processes, specific information and supporting computersystems are required.

Ad b. Keeping the specified maintenance behaviour like integrity, reliability, maintainability, availability and life cycle costs of technical systems at the required level, attention need to be payed at recording, reporting evaluation and analysis of these parameters.
Maintenance technology is directed to configuration management, diagnostics, failure and root cause analysis, adjustment of maintenance programs, application of condition monitoring techniques, determination of residual life and development of technical improvements.

Ad c. Maintenance Engineering contributes in the engineeringstage of technical systems in designing for the specified integrity, reliability, maintainability, availability and life cycle costs. Specific methods and techniques are applied for this purpose and feed back of maintenance experience to the desin stage have to be structured.

Maintenance engineering is also a function to develop an initial maitenance program, including the required documentation, spare parts and personnel requirements.

The subject provides a broadening of the theoretical technical and mathematical knowledge and a basis of various industrial engineering and business administration disciplines relevant for the maintenance and engineering function.

The mathematical basis is establihed by subjects like probability thoery, statistics, operations research, simulation and riskanalysis. Elementary knowledge on organsation theory, business systems and business economics is provided for.

Technical subjects, relevant for engineers acting in an industrial maintenance environment are added. Final thesiswork is usually performed in an industrial enterprise.

The subject is also open for students industrial marketing. They are provided with a number of lectures on technical marketing. Depending on the interest of the student, a selection of lectures will be chosen, providing a sufficient basis to perform a final thesis in the area of commercial aspects in maintenance management.

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