Problem statement: Manufacturing and production plants operate machines and equipment that deteriorate with usage and time thus requiring maintenance actions to restore them back to their original operational conditions. Approach: This study investigates the current standard of maintenance planning at a steel manufacturing facility in South Africa. The study begins with a thorough literature study to find good characteristics of planning which should be present at any facility that is optimally engaged in performing excellent maintenance planning effectively and efficiently. A number of key observations from the literature are made indicating that planning is a key component of maintenance and affects excellence in maintenance significantly. The literature recommends that planning should be set and based on key principles to allow for standardisation and efficiency. An empirical study in the form of a survey is then completed to benchmark the current maintenance-planning environment of the steel facility against the good characteristics of maintenance planning found in literature. Results: The results from the empirical study show that the current maintenance environment at the steel manufacturer is not optimal. The following issues are uncovered from the study: no schedulers employed to relieve the planners’ work overload, no guiding principles for planning and standardisation of work planning, no efficient shutdown planning and also no existent measures for tracking some of the key performance areas. Conclusion: Key recommendations to be considered for implementation for improving the status of the maintenance environment at the works include: introducing the scheduler position, standardising planning methodologies according to specific principles and rigorously focusing on overall maintenance improvement using standardised methodologies. / MBA (Business Administration), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

O volume crescente de software em funcionamento em todo tipo de organização vem despertando atenção para uma fase do ciclo de vida de software, até então considerada sempre de maneira secundária, a manutenção de software. O fato de geralmente não ser viável substituir os produtos de software de uma organização por outros baseados em tecnologias mais recentes, torna a manutenção daqueles sistemas legados um desafio adicional para a busca de técnicas e métodos para a manutenção de software. Os problemas oriundos dessa atividade precisam ser melhor compreendidos, e é justamente na definição e estudo dessas dificuldades que este trabalho se dedica. O confronto da teoria de engenharia de software com observações práticas conduz para a melhor definição de quais são os problemas típicos de manutenção de software e do que se dispõe para abordá-los. Finalmente, com base no entendimento formado sobre os problemas, neste trabalho são apresentdas diretrizes para guiar a elaboração de uma disciplina específica de manutenção de software para cursos de graduação na área de computação / The increasing volume of software being used in all types of organizations has been calling attention for a phase of the software life cycle, until now considered in a secondary way, the software maintenance. Since it is generally not possible to replace all software products used in an organization by others based on more recent technologies, the maintenance of those legacy systems becomes one more challenge for the search of techniques and methods to handle the software maintenance efficiently. The problems arising from this activity need to be better understood, and it is precisely on the definition and study of these difficulties that this work is devoted. The confrontation between the theory of software engineering and practice observations drives to the definition of typical problems of software maintenance and what exists to solve them. Besides, based on the understanding about these problems, this work also presents guidelines to drive the elaboration of a specific discipline of software maintenance for undergraduate courses in computing area

This report evaluate the maintenance policies that been applied within specific industrial company, Taken into considerations all corrective and preventive maintenance costs ,in addition to optimise best preventive maintenance schedule for minimum cost. Dynamate Intralog AB was the surveyed company that been encountered high maintenance cost compatible with less productivity, therefore obtaining maintenance schedule policy for minimum cost was the best solution for their problem, then by calculating their corrective and preventive maintenance cost the optimum time was acquired. Finally, the maintenance schedule approve that organized maintenance based on optimum time enhance the productivity and minimize the company maintenance cost.

Effective and efficient operations management is the cornerstone of any company's success. Presently, because of cost-cutting pressures, all investors look out for companies' operations before making any investment commitment. The South African Government (through the Department of Public Enterprises), as an owner and investor in Eskom, is looking at optimising operational excellence within state-owned enterprises like Eskom. Eskom is presently experiencing problems with increased electricity consumption which it cannot meet due to the limited plant capacity it presently has. These challenges are forcing Eskom to be more efficient and effective in management of the present plant assets (like Matimba Power Station) it presently operates. Matimba Power Station has consistently shown improvement in the areas of plant, financial and operations performance over the last three years. It is presently the standard bearer for the whole Eskom in terms of plant and operational performance. Asset management (through maintenance and management thereof), especially preventative management with in a power utility like Eskom, is a critical factor because supply (generation of electricity) has to meet demand (consumption of electricity) instantaneously as electricity cannot be saved. The planning, scheduling and execution of maintenance (through a work management process) to ensure success of business operations are very critical. An Eskom document titled Routine Work Management Manual emphasised the criticality of preventative management and included a six-step process of work management within the power generation business. The Japanese success in ensuring that operations costs are limited by implementing total productive maintenance (which includes work management) is suggested in the study as a way to go for operational success at Matimba Power Station. Many of the research studies done at Eskom in regard to maintenance were based on and confined to a sampling population of senior staff members like managers, engineers and supervisors. Experience has shown that progress of implementing change (whether in systems or structures) is slow if there was no proactive involvement of all participants and stakeholders, especially employees at lower levels involved in operations. A work management process, which is one of the pillars of total productive maintenance, was recently implemented at Matimba and is currently experiencing teething problems which are being attended to. Employee involvement in making sure of the success of work management is critical. The study investigates the implementation of work management from the employees' perspective in order to address problems for possible full implementation of total productive maintenance. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2010.

Effective and efficient operations management is the cornerstone of any company's success. Presently, because of cost-cutting pressures, all investors look out for companies' operations before making any investment commitment. The South African Government (through the Department of Public Enterprises), as an owner and investor in Eskom, is looking at optimising operational excellence within state-owned enterprises like Eskom. Eskom is presently experiencing problems with increased electricity consumption which it cannot meet due to the limited plant capacity it presently has. These challenges are forcing Eskom to be more efficient and effective in management of the present plant assets (like Matimba Power Station) it presently operates. Matimba Power Station has consistently shown improvement in the areas of plant, financial and operations performance over the last three years. It is presently the standard bearer for the whole Eskom in terms of plant and operational performance. Asset management (through maintenance and management thereof), especially preventative management with in a power utility like Eskom, is a critical factor because supply (generation of electricity) has to meet demand (consumption of electricity) instantaneously as electricity cannot be saved. The planning, scheduling and execution of maintenance (through a work management process) to ensure success of business operations are very critical. An Eskom document titled Routine Work Management Manual emphasised the criticality of preventative management and included a six-step process of work management within the power generation business. The Japanese success in ensuring that operations costs are limited by implementing total productive maintenance (which includes work management) is suggested in the study as a way to go for operational success at Matimba Power Station. Many of the research studies done at Eskom in regard to maintenance were based on and confined to a sampling population of senior staff members like managers, engineers and supervisors. Experience has shown that progress of implementing change (whether in systems or structures) is slow if there was no proactive involvement of all participants and stakeholders, especially employees at lower levels involved in operations. A work management process, which is one of the pillars of total productive maintenance, was recently implemented at Matimba and is currently experiencing teething problems which are being attended to. Employee involvement in making sure of the success of work management is critical. The study investigates the implementation of work management from the employees' perspective in order to address problems for possible full implementation of total productive maintenance. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2010.

This thesis investigates issues like maintenance problems, key factors, maintenance challenges, maintenance solutions and practical difficulties in wind energy. In this case, surveys and interviews have been taken from several companies and maintenance experts, to find most prevailing problems and problem-solving methods since last few years. It helps to show, how the energy maintenance has been developed in past few years. Also it analyses the impact of fourth generation maintenance in wind energy production. From research questions, key factors involved in wind energy maintenance provides us with valuable suggestions to develop the maintenance methods in future vision.

Dans cette thèse, nous nous intéressons aux problèmes d'ordonnancement simultané de tâches et de périodes d'indisponibilité. Dans un premier temps, nous réalisons une revue de littérature sur la prise en compte des indisponibilités dans les problèmes d'ordonnancement.Ensuite, nous définissons un modèle général qui englobe des modèles existants de la littérature pour des ateliers à une machine et à machines parallèles. Une approche globale de résolution basée sur les problèmes d'affectation linéaire a été développée. Cette approche permet de résoudre le modèle général comme un simple problème d'affectation. Un grand nombre de critères d'optimisation et de modèles de maintenance peuvent être traités en utilisant cette approche, fournissant ainsi l'accès à tous les modèles qui ont souvent été étudiés séparément dans la littérature. Les résultats élaborés avec cette approche ont permis de résoudre des problèmes d'ordonnancement non traités avant et aussi de généraliser et améliorer des résultats antérieurs.Nous proposons, en dernier lieu, une étude d'un problème flow shop à deux machines en présence d'une période d'indisponibilité sur la deuxième machine. Une étude de complexité est menée sur le problème. Ensuite, nous définissons des propriétés d'optimalité. En se basant sur ces propriétés, trois méthodes de résolution exacte sont proposées; une méthode énumérative, un programme linéaire et une méthode basée sur l'approche de séparation et évaluation B&B. Une analyse expérimentale est présentée afin d'évaluer les performances de ces méthodes. / In classical scheduling problems, machines are assumed to be continuously available. However, in a real manufacturing system, machine may become unavailable during the scheduling period due to preventive maintenance. In this dissertation, we are interested in the problems of jointly scheduling jobs and unavailability periods.We start our study by introducing a general framework for scheduling problems and we present a review of the scheduling problems with unavailability periods.Then, we consider a general model for scheduling jobs on single-machine and unrelated parallel-machines with maintenance interventions. A unified approach is presented to solve this model as an assignment problem. A large number of performance criteria and maintenance models can be treated in this way, thus providing access to models that have often been studied separately in the published literature.Finally, we focus on the problem of a two-machine flow-shop makespan scheduling with the deteriorating maintenance period on the second machine. Then, we establish some conditions of the optimal schedule. In order to solve the problem, we proposed different exact methods: enumerative method, mixed-integer programming (MIP) model and a branch & bound algorithm. Numerical experiments are reported for all the proposed methods.

O volume crescente de software em funcionamento em todo tipo de organização vem despertando atenção para uma fase do ciclo de vida de software, até então considerada sempre de maneira secundária, a manutenção de software. O fato de geralmente não ser viável substituir os produtos de software de uma organização por outros baseados em tecnologias mais recentes, torna a manutenção daqueles sistemas legados um desafio adicional para a busca de técnicas e métodos para a manutenção de software. Os problemas oriundos dessa atividade precisam ser melhor compreendidos, e é justamente na definição e estudo dessas dificuldades que este trabalho se dedica. O confronto da teoria de engenharia de software com observações práticas conduz para a melhor definição de quais são os problemas típicos de manutenção de software e do que se dispõe para abordá-los. Finalmente, com base no entendimento formado sobre os problemas, neste trabalho são apresentdas diretrizes para guiar a elaboração de uma disciplina específica de manutenção de software para cursos de graduação na área de computação / The increasing volume of software being used in all types of organizations has been calling attention for a phase of the software life cycle, until now considered in a secondary way, the software maintenance. Since it is generally not possible to replace all software products used in an organization by others based on more recent technologies, the maintenance of those legacy systems becomes one more challenge for the search of techniques and methods to handle the software maintenance efficiently. The problems arising from this activity need to be better understood, and it is precisely on the definition and study of these difficulties that this work is devoted. The confrontation between the theory of software engineering and practice observations drives to the definition of typical problems of software maintenance and what exists to solve them. Besides, based on the understanding about these problems, this work also presents guidelines to drive the elaboration of a specific discipline of software maintenance for undergraduate courses in computing area

Magister Legum - LLM

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.