Strategic approach to breakdown maintenance on construction plant – UAE perspective

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to develop a systematic strategic approach to handle corrective maintenance onto the failures/breakdowns of construction equipment. For the maintenance crew/team, a breakdown code management is proposed, which will provide focused and unambiguous approach to manage any kind of breakdowns in construction equipments.

Design/methodology/approach

The past breakdown records of a construction organization in the UAE are considered for analysis. From the failure data, through cause effect analysis (CEA) tools, the components and the breakdown codes namely breakdown main codes (BMC) and breakdown sub-codes (BSC) are formulated. With Pareto analysis, the critical codes are identified and validated through failure modes and effects analyses (FMEA) tools for the critical effect on the affected components. From this identified BSC's further closer failure identification codes namely breakdown symptom codes (BSyC) and breakdown reason codes (BRC) are identified through fault tree analysis (FTA) tools. The approach to modified breakdown maintenance management (MB2M) with breakdown maintenance protocol (BMP) is envisaged.

Findings

The study was conducted on four different types of heavy lifting/earth moving/material handling system of equipment and further focused with two earth moving equipment namely dumpers and wheel loaders. Failure analysis is performed and the failure ratio and the component contribution to the failures are identified. Based on the information, the preliminary codes namely BMC and BSC are identified through CEA tools and the BMC and BSC are identified to find the most contributing codes to the maximum number of failures through Pareto analysis. Further the critical sub-codes are further verified through FMEA tools on the severity levels of the sub components due to these codes. The FTA methods are used to identify the closer reasoning and relations of these codes and the further codes namely BSyC and BRC are identified which are the exact cause of the failures. The management of breakdowns is further proposed through MB2M which includes BMP which provides all resources for the breakdowns.

Research limitations/implications

The failure data collected are only pertaining to the Middle East region and applicable to similar regions for similar plant mix in construction companies. The sample equipment is only part representative of the construction equipment. A more robust model can be suggested in the future covering all aspects and for other regions as well.

Practical implications

The proposed methodology and model approach is highly adaptable to similar industries operating in the Middle East countries.

Originality/value

Many authors have studied the preventive maintenance models and procedures and proposals have been proposed. On the breakdown maintenance management of construction equipment, very few studies have been proposed mostly on the cost analysis. This model attempts to provide a code management solution to manage the unpredictable failures in construction equipment through failure data analysis on a construction organization.

Citation

Ahamed Mohideen, P.B. and Ramachandran, M. (2014), "Strategic approach to breakdown maintenance on construction plant – UAE perspective", Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 21 No. 2, pp. 226-252. https://doi.org/10.1108/BIJ-05-2012-0030