M.Phil. / In the modern world maintenance organisations are exposed to rapid changes in equipment complexity and the maintenance thereof. Maintenance people have to adopt completely new ways of thinking and managing. If organisations and their management do not adapt to these changes and challenges they are destined to oblivion. Moubray (1991:1) states that: "Managers everywhere are looking for a new approach in maintenance. They want to avoid the false starts and dead ends which always accompany major upheavals. Instead they seek a strategic framework which synthesizes the new developments into a coherent pattern, so that they can evaluate them sensibly and apply those likely to be of most value to them and their companies" One of the viable alternative business strategies and maintenance approaches in dealing with equipment complexity and hence the management thereof, is by means of maintenance outsourcing and contract setting. If done correctly it reduces the risk of organisations and increases flexibility. During outsourcing initiatives organisations will look for benefits such as improvement of its profit margins by means of inventory reductions, improved reliability, maintenance efficiency and expert skills maintaining their assets. Coetzee (1997:24) explain that the task of the maintenance function is "to support the production process with adequate levels of availability, reliability and operability at an acceptable cost". The same principles apply in adherence to the maintenance contracts where the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) or contractor also needs to support the customer with the adequate levels of availability, reliability and operability at defined costs. This can only be achieved by quality maintenance; "the right level of maintenance performed at the right time to the right equipment by workmen able and willing to deliver quality workmanship and using correct task specifications" (Coetzee, 2000a). The method used in maintenance outsourcing negotiation and binding agreements between the organisation and the contractor is a Repair and Olivier-2008 Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering - UJ Maintenance Contract; commonly known as R+M or MARC contracts. Essentially a Repair and Maintenance contract is the outsourcing of a long term Service Level Agreement (SLA) or maintenance project, normally to the OEM, or its authorised service organisation. "A maintenance and repair contract is a contractual agreement between the OEM (original equipment manufacturer), or contractor, and the equipment owner or user, where the OEM or contractor carries out all maintenance and repair activities at a guaranteed rate per hour" (Lugtigheid, et al. 2007). When organisations adapt outsourcing as a business strategy, it creates a framework of uncertainty and risk to Original Equipment Manufactures and/or maintenance contractors who has to perform the maintenance services. The focus of manufacturing and selling is thus disrupted by the challenge of the unknown playgrounds of competitiveness

This treatise investigates the underlying factors that are hindering the improvement of Overall Equipment Effectiveness at the Ford Struandale Engine Plant. In January of 2008 the Ford Motor Company announced plans to invest more than R1.5 billion to expand operations for the production of Ford's next-generation compact pickup truck and the PUMA diesel engine. Ford will use the investment to expand operations both in Silverton for the production of 75 000 units of a new bakkie and in Port Elizabeth for 220 000 units of its new-generation PUMA diesel engines (http://www.autoblog.com /2008/01/31/ford-to-invest-209m-in-south-africa-for-new-ranger-pickup/). Only five Ford plants globally will be producing the PUMA engine (Turkey, UK, Thailand, Argentina and South Africa – Ford Struandale Engine Plant). The Ford Struandale Engine Plant will be the only plant which will have the I4 assembly, I5 assembly and 3C (Crank, Cylinder Block, and Cylinder Head) machining and the expectations of operating in a lean environment is high. The management team at the Ford Struandale Engine Plant needs to understand what the underlying factors that are hindering the improvement of Overall Equipment Effectiveness of the plant or, in other words, they need to be informed of the total benefits of TPM. A literature review was conducted to determine what the theory reveals about Overall Equipment Effectiveness, the three factors of OEE (Availability, Performance Efficiency, and Quality), the influence of Six Big Losses on each of the factors and the role of Total Productive Maintenance in improving OEE by eliminating these Six Big Losses. A Ford literature study was conducted to reveal the current literature being applied at Ford. This was then followed by an empirical survey conducted within the Ford Struandale Engine Plant. In addition, a task team formed to analyse the current maintenance operating strategy. Finally, the findings from discussions with the task team, the empirical survey, Ford Struandale Engine Plant literature survey and a general literature survey were amalgamated to draw conclusions relating to the Ford Struandale Engine Plant. These conclusions indicate what the underlying factors are that are hindering the improvement of Overall Equipment Effectiveness of the Ford Struandale Engine Plant facilities and equipment. Then recommendations are made as to how the Ford Struandale Engine Plant can improve the Overall Equipment Effectiveness of its facilities and equipment.

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Often, in both the military and industrial sectors, the unavailability of essential components renders a complex system inoperable. Therefore, the primary objective of this research is to develop a methodology for determination of feasible strategies for the repair/replace decision. In the general equipment replacement problem, a finite planning horizon may be partitioned into stages such that an end item deteriorates toward a final stage where it is no longer economically or operationally feasible to continue to repair the item, or the item experiences fatal failure. This multi-stage deterioration process is very amenable to a dynamic programming solution methodology where the output from one stage becomes the input to the next stage. In the multi-stream replacement problem, the population of end items is grouped into streams depending upon such parameters as item age, the number of operational hours, or the environment in which the item operates. The reliability function is used to describe the survivor probability in this population model. A dynamic repair/replace program is formulated where the state functions are characterized by two parameters - item age and current operational condition. A computerized model is then developed that facilitates evaluation of repair/replacement strategies with respect to total life cycle costs of a logistics system. The solution methodology accommodates both stochastic and/or deterministic demand; different hazard models; a budget constraint; repair capacity constraint; various levels of repair; technological improvement; and organizational implementation issues. The operations impact of a generalized methodology for supporting the repair/replace decision and mode of repair is to provide opportunities for a more efficient use of organizational resources such as capital and repair facilities. / Ph. D. / incomplete_metadata

This study can be classified under the subject of equipment item replacement analysis. Simultaneous failure, SF, of the components of an equipment item, EI, is the topic of this thesis. Examination of the possibility of designing components of an EI for SF is one objective of the study. The motive for this objective is the belief that SF designs of EI minimize the total cost of acquiring and operating the EI. Examination of the strength of materials reveals that design life of components is not sufficiently flexible to realize SF, and design requirements can predetermine design life. This is true for mechanical components such as links, gears, and bearings. Hence it was concluded that SF of the mechanical components of an EI, cannot be easily achieved. The second objective of the study was to formulate a model for optimizing the design of the components of an EI with life considerations. A mechanical reliability model was first modified by the inclusion of fatigue stress-strength relationships, and the theory of Cumulative Damage. By mathematical manipulation to suit the principles of Lagrange's Method of Undetermined Multipliers, an optimization model has been developed. This model enables system and component design constraints and requirements to be included in the optimization process. / Master of Science

Submitted in fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Master of Technology: Cost and Management Accounting, Durban University of Technology, 2013. / Property, plant and equipment (PPE) constitute a significant portion of total assets of South African public higher education institutions. It is therefore important to keep proper records of the assets and to account for them accurately in the Annual Financial Statements. The aim of this study therefore was to investigate the accounting treatment of property, plant and equipment at public higher education institutions (PHEIs) in South Africa. The following objectives were addressed in this study, to: determine how assets are classified; find out how asset transactions are recorded; and to determine the accounting treatment of assets in terms of cost, depreciation, impairment and disposal. Based on the International Financial Reporting Standards, this study used a mixed-methods research approach to collect data regarding the accounting treatment of PPE at the 23 PHEIs in South Africa. Analysis of results indicated that some institutions: apply different useful lives for the same asset classes; use threshold amounts for the recording and depreciating of assets; use the same value for the recording and depreciating of assets while others record at one value but depreciate at a higher value; and depreciate PPE at different rates as they apply varying useful life to different asset classes. This study also found that while some institutions do impairment testing on an annual basis, others do not, as they do not have a policy in place for impairment testing. Given that the activities or business of educational institutions are similar in nature, this study recommends that PHEIs need to apply consistent recording of assets in terms of their useful life as the useful life of an asset has direct correlation with the surplus or deficit of an institution. This study makes further recommendations regarding the accounting treatment of PPE at PHEIs in South Africa based on the findings of this study. Suggestions for further research are also presented.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Johannesburg, December 2014. / Industrial units cannot operate without failure forever. When the operation of a unit deviates from industrial standards, it is considered to have failed. The time from the moment a unit enters service until it fails is its lifetime. Within reliability and often in life data analysis in general, lifetime is the event of interest. For highly reliable units, accelerated life testing is required to obtain lifetime data quickly. Accelerated tests where failure is not instantaneous, but the end point of an underlying degradation process are considered. Failure during testing occurs when the performance of the unit falls to some specified threshold value such that the unit fails to meet industrial specifications though it has some residual functionality (degraded failure) or decreases to a critical failure level so that the unit cannot perform its function to any degree (critical failure). This problem formulation satisfies the random signs property, a notable competing risks formulation originally developed in maintenance studies but extended to accelerated testing here. Since degraded and critical failures are linked through the degradation process, the open problem of modelling dependent competing risks is discussed. A copula model is assumed and expert opinion is used to estimate the copula. Observed occurrences of degraded and critical failure times are interpreted as times when the degradation process first crosses failure thresholds and are therefore postulated to be distributed as inverse Gaussian. Based on the estimated copula, a use-level unit lifetime distribution is extrapolated from test data. Reliability metrics from the extrapolated use-level unit lifetime distribution are found to differ slightly with respect to different degrees of stochastic dependence between the risks. Consequently, a degree of dependence between the risks that is believed to be realistic to admit is considered an important factor when estimating the use-level unit lifetime distribution from test data. Keywords: Lifetime; Accelerated testing; Competing risks; Copula; First passage time.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-12-03T18:32:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ricardo_Camargo_de_Araujo.pdf: 1419615 bytes, checksum: 04437bc693cc68941fc575a3a1679938 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2002-10-08 / The leasing has presented a significant growth in the participant countries of the Mercosul, especially in Brazil and Argentina. Aiming at the presentation of a comparative degree of the practiced forms of leasing in each on of the countries, initially, a revision of literature concerning the pertinent subjects to the theme was developed. By this way, the systemization of the bibliographical revision of this study was looked, as a form to discourse, resume and significantly, the financial system in each one of the countries, as well as its respective society of leasing and its peculiar characteristcs. From the confrontation of the revisions, in that it refers to the aspects of the Brazilian and Argentine leasing, the elaboration of a mathematical model became possible, used in the loans amortization. The study is finished with the presentation of a study of cases that makes possible the illustration and validation of the information presented in this research / O Arrendamento Mercantil tem apresentado um crescimento significativo nos pa??ses participantes do Mercosul, especialmente no Brasil e na Argentina. Visando a apresenta????o de um comparativo das formas de leasing praticadas em cada um dos pa??ses desenvolveu-se, inicialmente, uma revis??o da literatura acerca dos assuntos pertinentes ao tema. Desta forma, procurou-se sistematizar a revis??o bibliogr??fica deste estudo, de forma a discorrer, sucinta e significativamente, o sistema financeiro em cada um dos pa??ses, bem como suas respectivas sociedades de arrendamento mercantil e suas caracter??sticas peculiares. A partir da confronta????o das revis??es, no que tange aos aspectos do leasing brasileiro e argentino, tornou-se poss??vel a elabora????o de um modelo matem??tico, utilizado nos empr??stimos com amortiza????o.O estudo ?? finalizado com a apresenta????o de um estudo de casos que possibilita a ilustra????o e valida????o das informa????es apresentadas nesta pesquisa.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-12-03T18:32:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Olyr_Bortolatti_Junior.pdf: 701928 bytes, checksum: acecd891587c71274dcfde6dc6ab6740 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-07-04 / The main purpose of this work was to analyze the development of the operating lease companies in Brazil through an exploratory qualitative research next to 12 financial categories of financial institutions: independent institutions, institutions linked to financial conglomerates and institutions linked to industrial conglomerates. The chosen research tool aimed to study the critical factors present in the strategy of these financial institutions in the current context of the Brazilian financial market according to two dimensions: technology renewal and competitive strategy. The results showed that the development of the operating lease companies is in its initial phase, however they present operating financial institutions with high level of specialization and diversifie business management and operational structure patterns. As a final result, it was verified that, currently, the operating lease companies emphasize mainly the financing of equipment with high level of obsolescence when they focus, on their strategies, the potencial of the demand of the multinational companies and the large national groups that incorporate the concept of usage and not purchase of these assets, thus potentializing the increase in the businesses of these financial institutions. / Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo analisar o desenvolvimento da ind??stria de leasing operacional no Brasil, por meio de uma pesquisa explorat??ria de car??ter qualitativo junto a 12 agentes atuantes nesta modalidade dentro de um universo de 40 agentes atuando na ind??stria de leasing. Identifica tr??s categorias de agentes atuantes: agentes independentes, agentes ligados aos conglomerados financeiros e agentes ligados aos conglomerados industriais. O instrumento de pesquisa utilizado visou estudar os fatores cr??ticos presentes na estrat??gia destes agentes no contexto atual do mercado financeiro brasileiro, segundo duas dimens??es: renova????o tecnol??gica e estrat??gia competitiva. Os resultados demonstram que o desenvolvimento da ind??stria de leasing operacional encontra-se em fase inicial, mas apresentando agentes atuantes com alto grau de especializa????o e diversificadas formas de gest??o de neg??cios e estrutura operacional. Como resultados finais, constata-se que a ind??stria de leasing operacional enfatiza neste est??gio, principalmente o financiamento de equipamentos de alto grau de obsolesc??ncia, ao focar em suas estrat??gias o potencial da demanda de empresas multinacionais e grandes grupos nacionais que incorporam o conceito de uso e n??o de compra destes ativos, potencializando o incremento dos neg??cios destes agentes.

No description available.