Definition of Maintenance

Hello. I'm Jeff Shiver Managing principal of People and Processes. Today I wanted to share with you the definition of maintenance and to do that I am going to reflect on my past.

The best definition and description I've ever seen actually came from John Moubry .  I was watching a video of him one day and I want to share that with you. What John basically said is that the definition of maintenance begins with determining the want from the user.

If we take, for example, a pump, maybe the user of the process itself needs 300 gpm. We have 300 gpm and we establish that as the want of the user. When we're buying this pump and we know the process requirement is 300 gpm, where are we going to buy the pump at? Probably somewhere around 400 gpm maybe as an example.

We have 400 gpm and we establish this as the can, the capability of the pump. If you think about maintenance itself, where does maintenance operate? Maintenance operates in this range. We have to maintain the pump between where the users want it and the capability of the pump.

If, for example, the want exceeds the can, can we maintain that? The answer is no, we can't because it has already exceeded the capability of the pump which you find in many cases today. The challenge for us is that the want has to be below the can. Again, maintenance is operating in this area between the want and the can.

The function of maintenance is to cause the equipment to continue to do what the operators expect. That's the definition of maintenance. Hope you enjoyed the tip.

Have a great day. I'm Jeff Shiver Managing Principal of People and Processes.