This “Maintenance Engineering Handbook” is written, almost exclusively, by those people who have had to face the acute never-ending problems of equipment failures, repairs, and upkeep, day by day,hour by hour, midnight shift by midnight shift. They understand better than most the extraordinary demands that every maintenance manager, planner, and craftsperson must face and overcome to meet the everchanging maintenance requirements of today’s plant.
It is the function of “Maintenance Engineering Handbook” to pass along invention, ingenuity, and a large dose of pure basic science to you, the user. This then is your key, your guide, and your chief support in the tempestuous battle of Maintenance in the days and years ahead.Lindley R. Higgins, as editor-in-chief of the first five editions of this handbook, established a standard for excellence that we have attempted to maintain in this sixth edition. Through the excel�lent help of maintenance professionals, we have updated those sections that were in the earlier edi�tions and have added more than 20 new topics that we believe will help you survive in the battle against excessive downtime, high maintenance costs, and the myriad other problems that you as a maintenance professional must face each day
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION TO THE
THEORY AND PRACTICE
OF MAINTENANCE
As with any discipline built upon the foundations of science and technology, the study of mainte�nance begins with a definition of maintenance. Because so many misconceptions about this defi�nition exist, a portion of it must be presented in negative terms. So deeply, in fact, are many of these misconceptions rooted in the minds of management and many maintenance practitioners that perhaps the negatives should be given first attention.
Maintenance is not merely preventive maintenance, although this aspect is an important ingre�dient. Maintenance is not lubrication, although lubrication is one of its primary functions. Nor is maintenance simply a frenetic rush to repair a broken machine part or building segment, Al thoughthis is more often than not the dominant maintenance activity.
In a more positive vein, maintenance is a science since its execution relies, sooner or later, on most or all of the sciences. It is an art because seemingly identical problems regularly demand and receive varying approaches and actions and because some managers, foremen, and mechanics dis�play greater aptitude for it than others show or even attain. It is above all a philosophy because it is
a discipline that can be applied intensively, modestly, or not at all, depending upon a wide range of variables that frequently transcend more immediate and obvious solutions. Moreover, maintenance
is a philosophy because it must be as carefully fitted to the operation or organization it serves as a fine suit of clothes is fitted to its wearer and because the way it is viewed by its executors will shape its effectiveness.
Admitting this to be true, why must this science-art-philosophy be assigned—in manufacturing,power production, or service facilities—to one specific, all-encompassing maintenance department?
Why is it essential to organize and administer the maintenance function in the same manner that other areas are so handled? This chapter will endeavor to answer these questions. This handbook will
develop the general rules and basic philosophies required to establish a sound maintenance engi�neering organization. And, it will also supply background on the key sciences and technologies that underlie the practice of maintenance.
Let us, however, begin by looking at how the maintenance function is to be transformed into an operation in terms of its scope and organization, bearing in mind its reason for being—solving the day-to-day problems inherent in keeping the physical facility (plant, machinery, buildings, ser�vices)—in good operating order. In effect, what must the maintenance function do?
