INTRODUCTION

Since operational performance in the industrial environment is heavily

dependent upon plant and equipment performing according to design, the
achievement of sustainable
operational
excellence
demands
that
employees have skills in Plant Maintenance. This applies not only to
engineering staff, but also those who use the assets.
Maintenance involves activities carried out to prevent a system or an
equipment from failing. It could also be said to be the repair of normal equipment,
degradation experienced with the operation of the device in other to put it in proper
working condition.

A plant is an arrangement of processing unit (reactors, heat exchangers,

pumps, distillation column, evaporators, and condensers) integrated with
one another in a systematic and rational manner. The plant overall objective
is to convert certain raw material (input feed stock) into desirable materials
using available resources of energy in the most economical way.
Maintenance is the work of keeping something in proper condition, running,
working, in good repair. It means to take care of or to protect, it also means
to fix or repair something. Plant maintenance usually refers to the methods,
strategies, and practices used to keep an industrial factory running
efficiently. This can include anything from regular checks of equipment to
make sure they are functioning properly, to cleaning garbage bins and
toilets. The general aim of plant maintenance is to create a productive
working environment that is also safe for workers. The overall objective of
the maintenance process is to reduce downtime, prevent deterioration of
equipment and ensure that there is no accidents/incident in the workplace
due to mechanical failures. The process industry has witnessed some of the
major disasters in the world. The prominent among them were Bhopal (India,
1984), Flixoborough (England, 1974) and Seveso( Italy, 1976). The major
reasons for the above disasters were due to negligence, not working in
accordance with engineering practices and inadequate maintenance plan
highlighted by Kletz (1994). Bhopal wouldnt have happened ifv the
protective equipment were in place, also the refrigeration system was shut
down without any plan and the flare system which could have arrested the
vapors by burning them was out of order. All these events led to the domino
effect which caused the release of Methyl Iso Cyanide (MIC) thereby creating
havoc as reviewed by Crowl& louver(1990). Recently a check valve used to
control process gas flow for hydrocarbon gas service at shell oil company
(USA, 1997) failed due to high stress load on drive shaft dowel pin. The pin
fractured and drive shaft was expelled from the valve resulting in a large
flammable gas leak and vapor cloud explosion as comprehended by US EPA
and OSHA (1998). The plant downtime was three (3) hours while the
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explosion was felt 10 miles away. This resulted in many injuries and
equipment damage. The above incidents confirm that the accident happened
due to mechanical failures coupled with operational errors so there is a need
for maintenance of unit operations.

IMPORTANCE OF MAINTENANCE
Prevents interruption of production.
Prevents producing or rendering low quality services.
Saves energy, manpower and cost in the long run.
Prevents unscheduled downtime, shut downs.
Increases efficiency and prolongs the life span of equipments and
process lines.
Creates a safe working environment.

losses experienced in chemical process

Examples of losses experienced in chemical process could take the
form of :

Loss of/to human life

Loss in production activities

Loss to the environment

To human life, loss could be;

Minor or major flesh wounds
Loss of internal organs
Loss of external (amputation) organs
Terminal diseases
Loss of life.
losses in production activities could be:
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Equipment failure

Speed loss

Energy loss

Yield loss

Product quality loss

Unscheduled downtime

Start-up time

Financial loss.

CLASSES OF MAINTENANCE
Maintenance can be classified as follows:

Planned Maintenance: Planned Maintenance is a scheduled service visit carried out by a

competent and suitable agent, to ensure that an item of equipment is operating correctly
and to therefore avoid any unscheduled breakdown and downtime.
Autonomous Maintenance: it is an independent maintenance carried out by the
operators of the machines rather than by dedicated maintenance technicians. Autonomous
maintenance has the operators performing the simpler and safe maintenance routines such
as lubrication, bolt tightening, cleaning and also inspection and monitoring.

Planned maintenance
Steps involved in planned maintenance are:
Step 1: evaluate equipment and understand current conditions by preparing
equipment ledgers, evaluate standards from manuals, define failure ranks
and understand the process meticulously.
Step 2: restore deterioration and correct weaknesses by preventing identical
or similar major failures. Abolish environment which causes deterioration.
Step 3: build up an information management system which consists of failure
database, equipment budget and systems for controlling spares and standby
unit.
Step 4: build a periodic maintenance system by preparing maintenance
worksheets, equipment and components, periodic maintenance and improve
shutdown maintenance.

Step 5: build up predictive maintenance system.

Step 6: evaluate the planned maintenance system by using reliability and
cost data.

Autonomous maintenance
Steps involved in autonomous maintenance are:
Step 1: Perform initial cleaning and inspection of all equipment.
Step 2: Establish counter measures for the causes and effects of dirt and
dust.
Step 3: Create cleaning and lubrication standards for activities.
Step 4: Conduct general inspection training for all equipment.
Step 5: Carry out equipment inspection checks on a frequent basis.
Step 6: Workplace management and control needed to ensure success.
Step 7: Continuous improvement never ends. (www. Enna.com)

MAINTENANCE STRATEGIES
Maintenance can be defined as an activity carried out for any equipment to ensure
its reliability to perform its functions.
The main purpose for maintenance strategies is to ensure the plant and associated
services are in safe condition fit for use and comply with the law and all statutory
requirements. Maintenance strategy is adopted in order to extend the life cycle of
plants and its services. Maintenance personnel choose different strategies
depending on allocation and resources
Corrective maintenance:
Maintenance is carried out based on the detection of an anomaly, like a breakdown
of the system. It is aimed at restoring normal operating conditions. This strategy
may be cost effective until catastrophic faults occur.
Preventive maintenance:
Maintenance carried out at predetermined intervals or according to prescribed
criteria, aimed at reducing the failure risk or performance degradation of the
equipment. The maintenance cycles are planned according to the need to take the
device out of service. The incidence of operating faults is reduced.
Risk-based maintenance:

Maintenance carried out by integrating analysis, measurement and periodic test

activities to standard preventive maintenance. The gathered information is viewed
in the context of the environmental, operation and process condition of the
equipment in the system. The aim is to perform the asset condition and risk
assessment.
All equipment displaying abnormal values is refurbished or replaced. In this way it is
possible to extend the useful life and guarantee over time high levels of reliability,
safety and efficiency of the plant.
Condition-based maintenance:
Maintenance based on the equipment performance monitoring and the control of
the corrective actions taken as a result. The real actual equipment condition is
continuously assessed by the online detection of significant working device
parameters and their automatic comparison with average values and performance.
Maintenance is carried out when certain indicators give the signaling that the
equipment is deteriorating and the failure probability is increasing. This strategy in
the long term allows reducing drastically the costs associated with the
maintenance, thereby minimizing the occurrence of serious faults and optimizing
the available economic resources management.

MAINTENANCE COST
In recent years, there is a growing concern on the subject of higher
maintenance cost and maintenance productivity. According to some
company, maintenance is the largest single manageable expenditure in the
plant: in many companies, surpass their annual net profit. Although many
agrees that maintenance strategies such as preventative and predictive
maintenance program has been shown to produce saving of up to 25%,
study have shown that still 1/3 of these maintenance cost can be saved.
Typically, maintenance cost can be divided into two main groups namely:
1) Direct costs are easy to justify and to report. They consist of items such as labor,
materials, services, and maintenance overhead cost are the cost tabulated and shown as
maintenance costs.
2) Hidden or indirect costs which are harder to measure. These hidden cost of maintenance
are classified as the six big losses: Breakdowns and unplanned plant shutdown losses,
Excessive set-up, changeovers and adjustments losses,
Idling and minor stoppages,
Running at reduced speed,
Startup losses and
Quality defects.
Therefore, it is very important for companies to maximize their maintenance
effectiveness and equipment uptime. According to a study on maintenance
productivity, most maintenance department is only around 25% to 35%
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productive. This causes many companies to experience difficulties with

quality control, production levels and schedule adherence, since the
equipment they are using is not properly maintained. Table 2 shows some
comparison between the effect of effective and non-effective maintenance
process.
However, maintenance productivity can be drastically improved by planning
and scheduling of maintenance activities. For the past 20 years, most
manufacturers has only focusing on reducing costs in the manufacturing
processes to stay competitive as the low cost producer. This effort although
yielded some measurable productivity gain still retarded the opportunity for
the additional maximum gain in the overall productivity since maintenance
often was excluded from these improvement plans. Clearly, it is also
important to integrate maintenance program into these improvement
agenda.
Another preference to increase the level of maintenance productivity is to
outsourcing for maintenance partners. Associating with professional
maintenance people give a company the advantage to address these issues
with those experts who face and meet these challenges on a daily basis. In
addition, outsourcings also enable a company to gain greater control over
maintenance results. However, it is important to note that the following key
elements have to be highlighted to achieve the optimum benefit from these
outsourcing activities:

Performance measurements are developed and clearly communicated

Planned maintenance is established as the focus of the operation
Maintenance becomes a competitive advantage
Both manufacturer and maintenance contractor desire a mutually beneficial relationship
Maintenance best practice are established and tracked

In the maintenance partnership scenario, performance guarantees and

continuous improvement goals provide greater control over maintenance
results and assure production goals are being achieved. Thus another
question arises as to when we have to start our maintenance program? The
traditional approach of capital engineering and project organizations is
measured on two key objectives being on time and being on budget. Those
measurements inevitably drive the project teams to focus on total installed
cost. Contradict to this, maintenance and reliability group focuses their effort
on equipment that is up and running and their concern are more on the
machine availability, reliability and avoiding down time.

TYPES OF MAINTENANCE
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BREAKDOWN MAINTENANCE (REACTIVE MAINTENANCE)

This is one of the earliest maintenance programs being implemented in the

industry.In this type of maintenance no care is taken for the machine/equipment
until it fails. It is known as the run it, till it breaks mode. The objective of this
maintenance is to restore the system to satisfactory operate within the shortest
possible time. This usually involves replacing or repairing the components that is
responsible for the failure of the overall system. This type of maintenance is
performed at unpredictable intervals because a components failure time is not
known a priori. This type of maintenance could be used when the failure does not
significantly affect the operation or production or generate any significant loss other
than repair cost (Example allowing a light bulb to fuse before its replacement).
Thus, this activity may consist of repairing, restoration or replacement of
components. The strategy is to apply the corrective maintenance activity only,
which is required to correct a failure that has occurred or is in the process of
occurring.
Breakdown maintenance is typically carried out in three steps:.

Diagnosis of the problem: The maintenance technician must take time to locate the
failed parts or otherwise satisfactorily assess the cause of the system failure.
Repair and/or replacement of faulty components(s):Once the cause of the failure has
been determined, action must be taken to address the cause, usually by replacing or
repairing the component that caused the system to fail.
Verification of the repair action: once the component(s) in question have been repaired
or replaced, the maintenance technician must verify that the system is again successfully
operating.

Advantages of Breakdown Maintenance

Requires less manpower

Low investment cost for maintenance

Disadvantages of Breakdown Maintenance

Unplanned downtime of equipment.

Shortens lifespan of equipment.
Leads to probable damage of secondary equipment.
Low quality of products.
Increases cost in the long run.
Inefficient use of staff resources.

PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE:

This is a schedule of planned maintenance actions aimed at the prevention of

breakdowns and failuresthrough the prevention of deterioration, periodic inspection
or equipment condition monitoring. The primary goal of preventive maintenance is
to prevent the failure of equipment before it actually occurs. it is designed to
preserve and enhance equipment reliability by replacing worn components before
they actually fail. Preventive maintenance activities include equipment checks, oil
changes, lubrication and so on. Recent technological advances in tools for
inspection and diagnosis have enabled even more accurate and effective equipment
maintenance.This is a time-based maintenance strategy where on a predetermined
periodic basis, equipment is taken off-line, opened up and inspected. Based on
visual inspection, repairs are made and the equipment is then put back on-line.
Thus under this equipment maintenance strategy, replacing, overhauling or
remanufacturing an items is done at a fixed intervals regardless of its condition at
the time...
Advantages

Cost effective in many capital-intensive processes.

Increased component life cycle.
Energy saving.
Reduced equipment or process failure.
Costs less when compared to the reactive maintenance.

Disadvantages

Labor intensive.
Includes performance of unnecessary maintenance.
May not reduce the likelihood of catastrophic failure.
Incidental damages might occur during maintenance.

Predictive Maintenance
This is a method in which the service life of important part is predicted based on inspection
or diagnosis. Predictive maintenance is condition-based maintenance. The approach is
based on measuring of the equipment condition in order to assess
whether equipment will fail during some future period, and then taking
action to avoid the consequences of that failures. This is where predictive
technologies (i.e. vibration analysis, infrared thermographs, ultrasonic
detection, etc.) are utilized to determine the condition of equipment, and
to decide on any necessary repairs. Apart from the predictive
technologies, statistical process control techniques, equipment
performance monitoring or human senses are also adapted to monitor the
equipment condition. It involves measuring and analyzing data about deterioration and

generally employs an on-line surveillance system (Example vibration measurement of

turbine bearings).
Proactive maintenance:
Unlike the three type of maintenance strategies which have been discussed
earlier, proactive maintenance can be considered as another new approach
to maintenance strategy. Dissimilar to preventive maintenance that based on
time intervals or predictive maintenance that based on condition monitoring,
proactive maintenance concentrate on the monitoring and correction of root
causes to equipment failures. The proactive maintenance strategy is also
designed to extend the useful age of the equipment to reach the wear-out
stage by adaptation a high mastery level of operating precision.

Effects of Poor Maintenance

Improper maintenance effects the machine or equipment. This indirectly
effects the production of the organization and the quality of the product. This
gives direct impact on the following:

Product capacity: machines failed due to breakdown

manufacture, thus the capacity of the plant is reduced

Product cost: Labour cost per unit increases as the idle labour time
increases

when improper functioning of machines takes place, material scrap, unit labour and
material costs increases.

cannot

-maintenance cost of the plants also increases

Product and service quality:

-improper maintenance of machines produces poor quality products

-improperly maintained machines have frequent breakdowns and cannot
provide better service to customers

Employee or Customer safety:

-improperly maintained equipments are likely to fail which may injure an

employee
-product of poor quality may injure the customer.

Customer satisfaction:
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-when production equipments frequently breakdown, poor quality products

will be produced.
-also frequent breakdown leads to increase service time to customer.

Organisation losses:

-huge losses to organization, that is increased maintenance cost, labour cost

e.t.c
-product manufacturing cost increases

EFFECTS OF MAINTENANCE
EFFECTIVE MAINTENANCE

NON-EFFECTIVE MAINTENANCE

o Restores system productivity

o Avoid
any
unnecessary
shutdown
o Increase the efficiency of the
equipment
o Prolong the system life
o Improve the overall plant
productivity
o Essential to maintain product
quality
o Increases plants profit

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o Increased maintenance cost.

o Reduce
the
system
or
equipment life
o Reduce the efficiency of heat
transfer
o Increase the unwanted waste
o Additional cost to clean the
system
o Can effect product quality
o Reduce the plant productivity
o Downgrades
the
system
effectiveness
o Decreased plant profit