“Maintenance” is the management of failure behavior. It is of no use to anyone if we take over the failure behaviour of our neighbours or a supplier. They work differently, have different raw materials, different quality requirements, a different mission, strategy and implementation. They make other modifications to their machines. Maintenance plans should always be developed based on the actual failure behaviour of your processes in your environment with your budget, your procedures and served by your people who deliver your quality to your customers.

It’s dubious to take over maintenance plans from others. In the last 20 years we have measured this and it appears that >94% of the “borrowed” maintenance plans have an MPE of only 23 – 39%. The “borrowed” maintenance plans therefore only cover 23 – 39% of your failure behaviour. There is a good chance that you will suffer from unplanned costs and quality problems.

Only if the machine remains original and does exactly what it was designed to do will we see the MPE rise to 70 – 85%. The last percentages are the most profitable, but are also the most difficult to achieve. This is only possible with professional Reliability Management.

Since failure behaviour is dynamic, dynamic maintenance plans are also required to ensure that the current failure behaviour remains covered.