Effective maintenance strategy and reliability engineering techniques in a flexible manufacturing system

Abstract : The research is about the application of reliability engineering techniques supporting an effective maintenance strategy using a case study from Company X’s Boksburg site. Company X is one of the biggest defence companies in the world, for manufacturing of ammunition and artillery worldwide. It consists of four sites in Wellington, Somerset West (Western Cape), Boskop (North-west) and Boksburg (Gauteng). There is currently a huge demand in sales and that has increased the production capacity needed. The availability and reliability of machines are seen as an essential key performance indices to keep the plant running without interruptions. This research will investigate the adoption of a maintenance strategy in Company X, the application of reliability engineering techniques in Company X’s Boksburg site and the key performance indices supporting an effective maintenance strategy compared to the literature review as best practice. The study followed a research design including the deductive approach, quantitative research, research strategy of a holistic case study and the data collection through questionnaires (primary data) and technical operational information (secondary data).The data collection is then used to analyse and make conclusions based on the research questions. The data from questionnaires resulted in a Cronbach‘s alpha of 0,8988 for internal consistency of the data collected. The study suggested that the current adopted maintenance strategy is a reactive maintenance practice since the questions asked were on prevention and predictive practices. It yielded a disagreement of 42%. The research suggested that the application of reliability engineering techniques is also not frequently practiced compared to best practice techniques, since the rate from the questionnaires yielded a 51% disagreement. The comparison of triangulation including operational information it rated a comparison of 37, 5% agreement in terms of the application. The research suggested key performance indices as compared to literature review resulted in 62, 8% agreement and from questionnaires resulted in 43% agreement.M.Ing. (Engineering Management