Maintenance Management Techniques by A. S. Corder
Book Review: Maintenance Management Techniques
In 1976, it was the U.S. bicentennial.
Oh What a Night [YouTube] by the Four Seasons was near the top of the pops.
Computers were still the exclusive domain of geeks.
Gasoline, already subject to the ravages of early 1970s-era inflation, averaged 59 cents per gallon.
The Dow Jones, not yet the object of a stock market bubble, sat at around 1,000, denying options-traders and derivatives-peddlers their time in the sun.
New houses ran about $43,000, keeping the opportunity to package bad mortgages and sell them to pension fund managers from being quite the profitable enterprise it became in the early 21st century.
And it was in that auspicious year when A. S. Corder’s Maintenance Management Techniques
Oldsmobile Cutlass, Best-Selling Car in 1976
In those ancient times “reliability” had yet to come upon the scene as the popular new concept. CMMS was a figment of some geek’s imagination and EAM systems weren’t even that. Vibration analysis referred to something done with a screwdriver. Temperature measurement usually meant something akin to “laying on hands.”
But industry was moving away from pure reactive maintenance and toward planned maintenance, the subject of Maintenance Management Techniques
Actually, one of the great strengths of the book is that the subject matter is approached from a kind of age of innocence before the confusion created by computer systems. (Although the book itself presages the growth of computer use in tracking maintenance and compiling statistics.)
Most of the forms and examples presented would be used on paper. The forms are minimal – just what is needed and no more. The input is by handwriting or by typewriter. And yet, while quaint, wouldn’t this clarity and simplicity be ideal in reducing confusion and getting the information needed into our systems?
Key Concepts
- Procedures must not be static, but must be continually adapted to new organizational learning. [This concept is very similar to continuous improvement without referencing the term.]
Experience shows that too many firms, after writing their maintenance schedules, proudly bind them in a reference folder, forget about them, and send the related job specifications to the printers to be run off in their thousands. Thus the planned-maintenance scheme becomes stultified and management wonders subsequently why maintenance performance, costs and downtime, after initial signs of considerable improvement, show a disappointing leveling off at a point far sooner than was hoped for.
- Caution: the “type A” failure curve is referenced as the model for machine deterioration in section 5.3 on “predictive maintenance.” Although the Nolan and Heap study had been published by the time this book went to press, it apparently had not yet become common knowledge in England. This is a minor detraction for an otherwise good book. [The assumption of constant operating conditions is noted, however.]
- Collecting and analyzing data helps make maintenance cuts in the right place, when it is absolutely necessary for reasons of economy.
If economy cuts have to be made in maintenance expenditure, the best areas in which to impose these can now be worked out scientifically based on the known performance of the plant. The conventional approach to doing this by an arbitrary 10 per cent reduction, say, right across the board in so far as maintenance in concerned, simply does not make engineering sense, and as likely as not will result in increased downtime, consequently greater production losses and ultimately a greater loss to the company than the 10 per cent reduction imposed in the first place.
- Central workshops are an important part of the maintenance department. If enough work is going on in them, say 8-12
menemployees working full-time, then a separate supervisor may be needed. Workshop location and layout should, ideally, be planned from the beginning rather than placed in some remote corner as an afterthought. - What is the ultimate end of the multi-skill chain of logic? Why, with the same employees (and machines) working in maintenance and production of course! Corder addresses the issue thus:
Some companies endeavor to make economies in the use of men and machines by employing them on production work as well as maintenance and capital construction. This step invariably proves to be based on totally false assumptions, since at times of higher production the need for more maintenance is also greater. If the same men and machines are employed on maintenance as are on production, maintenance is always the first to suffer, followed ultimately by loss of the very production the company are attempting to achieve, due to lack of plant maintenance.
- To centralize or not to centralize? Corder advocates centralization, though with recognition of many of the difficulties that can accompany de-decentralization:
- large companies with corresponding amounts of plant and machinery
- large distance between production and central workshops
- physical barriers and infrastructure safety hazards (highways, canals, etc.) in highly congested areas
- Restrictive worker agreements that define in great detail “who does what”
- Detailed parts drawings should be insisted upon for all new equipment. This prevents “trial and error” parts replacements where maintenance job shops have to reverse engineer parts from old, worn, corroded, or broken parts where even the material of construction may not be known.
- Aptitude testing should be part of the craft and engineering education and career progression. [Ironically, and for reasons I will not elaborate here, use aptitude testing in the U.S. has declined dramatically since the publication of this book.] Corder also notes that “general management” skills are insufficient to make a maintenance manager. In Corder’s own words:
One of the most important requirements for young men embarking on a maintenance-engineering career, not only applicable to craftsmen and technicians, but also up to the highest levels in maintenance, should be some form of aptitude testing – aptitude for mechanical mindedness – in addition to the usual minimum scholastic requirements. This applies equally to those proceeding to electrical engineering, electronics or instruments. A latent aptitude is essential, since it is an indisputable fact that one can no more teach someone to become an artist who has no latent artistic ability than to train a maintenance engineer or craftsman who has no mechanical aptitude…
A maintenance manager worth his position should be capable of solving a maintenance problem and then going out onto the shop floor and putting the machine to rights with his own hands. He should be capable of doing this, not that the occasion should arise except under the most exceptional circumstances.
- In addition to aptitude testing, rudimentary skills testing should be employed. For example, a fitter should prove he can read a micrometer and vernier caliper while a painter should be able to identify different types of paint and their uses while understanding how to mix and thin them.
Useful Features
- Plant inventory card (p. 26) and electrical-equipment inventory card (p. 27)
- Maintenance request form (p. 59)
- Job specification example (p. 69)
- Inspection report (p. 75)
- Planned lubrication forms (p. 83)
- Work priority index (p. 87)
- Daily standby record (p. 96) [A temporary substitute for planned maintenance designed to collect information on maintenance needs while placating operations managers who do not want to give up standby personnel.]
- Maintenance reports: weekly labor tabulation (p. 98), weekly emergency maintenance summary (p. 100), four-week maintenance report (p. 101), and maintenance top-ten analysis (p. 103)
- Workshop planning flowchart (p. 156)
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Maintenance Organization
Chapter 2: Costing
Chapter 3: Planning and Control – Preparation
Chapter 4: Planning and Control – Operation
Chapter 5: Planning and Control – Progression
Chapter 6: The Central Workshop
Chapter 7: Materials and Stores Control
Chapter 8: Education and Training
Chapter 9: Cost Studies
Appendix A :Staff Job Descriptions
Appendix B: Plant-Inventory Preparation
Appendix C: How to Fill in the Maintenance Request – Staff and Supervisors’ Instructions
Appendix D: Preparation of Maintenance Schedules
Appendix E: Preparing the Workshop Order Set
References
Index
by Kunio Shirose
by Ramesh Gulati
by Ron Moore
by Charles Koch:
]
and 
(ironically out of print)—the book is actually pretty good.
