Answer:
Equipment Reliability and Maintenance
SUBSTANTIAL CAPITAL investments, in the form of facilities and equipment, are required for manufacturing almost all goods of economic significance. The productivity of these investments is a fundamental element of competition among companies and nations. Events that slow or interrupt the manufacturing process or degrade the product impair the competitiveness of a manufacturing enterprise.
The term equipment reliability and maintenance (ERM) encompasses not only equipment, such as machines, tools, and fixtures, but also the technical, operational, and management activities, ranging from equipment specifications to daily operation and maintenance, required to sustain the performance of manufacturing equipment throughout its useful life. This chapter addresses all causes of diminished or degraded output. The panel considers ERM to be a significant factor in the competitiveness of manufacturing firms, an assessment supported by the case studies in the section on present practice (pp. 57-63).
Historically, the evolution of ERM can be traced from breakdown maintenance and repair to preventive maintenance to predictive maintenance. Breakdown maintenance and repair is the after-the-fact restoration of failed equipment. Preventive maintenance is the systematic servicing of equipment to reduce the possibility of failure. Predictive maintenance, in use in U.S. industry for only four or five years, is usually understood to involve the use of computer software to detect conditions that might eventually lead