106 Maintenance and Information Management in a Competitive Environment

A myriad of failed industrial machinery are being abandoned in many quarters due to inadequate technical know-how for restoring them to operative condition. There is need for effective management of maintenance facilities, including: tools and equipment, personnel, and other infrastructures for the attainment of sustainable maintenance operations in a competitive environment. For a good performance of maintenance centre in a competitive environment, a framework that allows dynamism in the development of maintenance resources needs to be put in place. The updating of maintenance facilities to meet varying technology-demand of defective machinery would minimize the problems of abandonment and will contribute to the growing economy, as well. Updating of maintenance facilities would be effective through installation of a proper information management system. A good information management system would prognosis into the features of emerging and new maintenance problems and the facilities required to solve them. Efficient interrelationship between maintenance activities and information management will promote agility in the system. In this study, a framework was developed to integrate maintenance activities with information management such that agility is created in maintenance system and the effect of competition is minimized. It was observed that there is substantial economic benefit in the areas of reduction in abandoned equipment and revitalization of production economy. The benefits from agile maintenance system have outweighed the cost of acquisition of the information. The application of developed maintenance system in industries has allayed the fair for survival from the threat of equipment abandonment due to failure.