Maintenance in manufacturing environment: An overview

Maintenance is one of the major activities in manufacturing as it highly influences production quality and quantity and directly affects production cost and customer satisfaction. As new manufacturing technologies emerge and global communication advances, new maintenance practices are developed to cope with these changes. The role of maintenance in maintaining asset value over time is getting more visible at the business level with the increase in its acquisition and maintenance costs. In this chapter, various manufacturing systems are introduced along with their distinctive features that influence maintenance strategies and practices. Maintenances management concepts, philosophies, policies, and practices in manufacturing are briefly described and discussed in this chapter.