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A maintenance prioritisation approach to maximise return on

investment subject to time and budget constraints

Article  in  Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering · August 2008

DOI: 10.1108/13552510810899472

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JQME METHODOLOGY AND THEORY

14,3
A maintenance prioritisation
approach to maximise return on
272
investment subject to time and
budget constraints
Allen S.B. Tam
Silcar Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia, and
John W.H. Price
Co-operative Research Centre for Integrated Engineering Asset Management
(CIEAM), Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department,
Monash University, Clayton, Australia

Abstract
Purpose – Asset maintenance activities need to be prioritised as budget and planned outage time is
often limited for all maintenance work to be carried out. The purpose of this paper is to develop a
technique for prioritising maintenance work that maximises the return on investment under the
constraints of budget and time.
Design/methodology/approach – Three indices are proposed to be used as indicators for
prioritising maintenance. These indices are termed: maintenance investment index (MII), time index
(TI) and budgetary index (BI). These indices permit prioritisation of asset maintenance based on the
required emphasis on return on maintenance investment, time and budget respectively.
Findings – It is found that approaches to prioritising maintenance which integrate the critical
dimensions in the decision making process are lacking in the literature. There is a need for such an
approach to assist decision makers to ensure enterprise’s objectives and targets are maximised with
given budget and planned shutdown time.
Practical implications – The proposed techniques will assist engineers and mangers to develop
their maintenance plan according to the enterprise needs and constraints and allowing management to
make a better informed decision in maintenance.
Originality/value – This paper provides a new technique for ranking maintenance that maximises
return on investment.
Keywords Maintenance, Production management, Return on investment, Productive maintenance
Paper type Research paper

Journal of Quality in Maintenance
Engineering
Vol. 14 No. 3, 2008
pp. 272-289
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1355-2511
DOI 10.1108/13552510810899472
1. Introduction
We propose that maintenance is a business function such as any other in a business; it
has to prioritise activities in terms of return on the investment. It is also the case the
maintenance in particular is limited in respect to the amount of time and money which
is available.
In the academic maintenance literature the key business objective of return on
investment is often ignored, and it is also the case that overwhelming importance of
time and budget constrains is also often overlooked. These, however, are the factors, A maintenance
which most influence the decisions of the asset manager/maintenance planner. prioritisation
In this paper a ranking criterion for maintenance decision making that align with
enterprise objectives is proposed. approach

1.1 Notation
The list of notation used in this paper is listed below: 273
B Budget.
BI Budget index.
k the maintenance task number k.
MDTk Maintenance Downtime for task k. Equals the time for which
task k cannot be carried out simultaneously with other
packages, equals 0 if task can be performed simultaneously
with other tasks.
MII Maintenance investment index.
MP Maintenance package – a set of maintenance tasks.
NOT Non-operating time: NOT ¼ ð1 2 ORp Þ £ T p is the non-operating
time or outage time available for period p.
ODC Output dimension cost.
ORp Operation rate in planning period p.
p Plant planning period p.
RDC Risk dimension cost.
Re DC Resources dimension cost.
Tp Total time in planning period p.
TI Time index.
t b
Weibull function: Reliabity at time, t ¼ RðtÞ where RðtÞ ¼ e 2ðE Þ where b is the
“shape function” and E is the time characteristic parameter.

2. Literature review
Previous research has advocated integrating maintenance and production in
formulating decision-making models. However none of these papers recognises what
we propose is the basic maintenance question:
What is the best maintenance to do in terms of return on investment given that there are time
and budget constraints?
Weinstein and Chung (1999) integrated maintenance and production decisions in
production planning. The model was tested with experiments for the significance of
different factors affecting maintenance policy. Boukas and Liu (2001) addressed the
production and maintenance control problem for a single unit manufacturing system
JQME producing single part type. Optimisation was carried out to optimise both the
14,3 production and maintenance rates. Iravani and Duenyas (2002) considered a
“make-to-stock” production system with single machines producing single unit
using a Markov Decision Process. It was suggested that common practice of separating
decision making in maintenance and production can be costly and advised that these
decision should be made in an integrated fashion.
274 Alfares et al. (2005) proposed a model that considers both the deterioration of the
produced items and production equipment. Serval realistic aspect such as item and
process deterioration, varying demand and production rates, quality, inspection and
maintenance were integrated in formulating the model with heuristic solution
approach. Cassady and Kutanoglu (2005) found that the inter-dependency of
preventive maintenance and repair, both affecting available production time and the
probability of machine failure is overlooked in the literature. They proposed an
integrated model coordinating preventive maintenance planning for a single machine
that minimise expected job completion time.
Decision makers in various industries have developed their own approach in
prioritising maintenance based on their experiences. Even within the same industry,
there are different approaches. Taking the case of sewer maintenance, Fenner (2000)
reported that many drainage authorities have developed their own systems for
identifying critical area of maintenance and it was suggested that holistic management
strategies are need. Al-Najjar and Alsyouf (2003) introduced a fuzzy multiple criteria
decision-making evaluation methodology for the selection of the most efficient
maintenance approach. A model of maintenance decision-making using the analytic
hierarchy process (AHP) was developed by Labib et al. (2004) and was suggested that
the model promote strategic decisions. Through prioritising machines’ criticality the
model maximise gains based on different criteria. Labib et al. (2004) suggested that the
developed model utilises the best out of reliability centred maintenance (RCM) and total
production maintenance (TPM).
Moore and Starr (2006) proposed the cost-based criticality (CBC) strategy that draws
together cost, criticality and other factors (such as limited resources)
P
to prioritise

condition-based maintenance. The CBC is calculated as: CBC ¼ P; C; Q; SE; CS P f
(Equation 1, Moore and Starr (2006)), where P is the production loss, C the capital
equipment, Q the quality, SE safety and environment, CS customer satisfaction and Pf
probability of failure. Some of the data required to calculate CBC are very difficult to
obtain and quantify.
Approaches to prioritising maintenance based on failure mode, effect and critically
analysis (FMECA) is defined in the US Military Standard, MIL-STD-1629A (1980).
Work such as reliability centred maintenance (RCM) (Nowlan and Heap, 1978;
Moubray, 1997) developed maintenance prioritisation according to FMECA results.
These approaches however do not integrate with financial considerations.
None of the above approaches addresses the question of how to prioritise
maintenance in terms of return on investment given that there are time and budget
constraints. The authors believe that these approaches still leave a significant gap in
the maintenance prioritisation literature.
3. Maintenance prioritisation framework A maintenance
The framework proposed by Tam and Price (2008) (see Figure 1) considered that there prioritisation
are three critical decision-making dimensions, which are given the names: output, risk
and resources. The three decision dimensions for asset management considered in this
approach
work are defined as follows:
(1) Output dimension – measures achievement of an organisation’s production and
275
service delivery objectives for operating the asset. The output dimension also
involves planned outages required to meet compliance requirements such as
satisfying regulations, safety and company quality standards.
(2) Risk dimension – is the cost of unexpected and unplanned incidents and events.
This cost normally cannot be reflected on real expenditure and will not be
reflected on the enterprise’s accounting balance sheets. The consequences of
failure can be both financial and non-financial such as loss of production time,
injuries and deaths, customer satisfaction, company reputation and other
liabilities. Note that insurance may be used to reduce the risk associated with
very infrequent major failures and this may have to be considered in some
calculations.
(3) Resources dimension – is concerned with expenditure for maintenance and the
costs for supporting the resources required for maintenance.

The maintenance prioritisation framework shown in Figure 2 is developed though the

application of the maintenance optimisation framework proposed by Tam and Price
(2008). The process begins with gathering information from different forms of data
including: condition data, breakdown data and scheduled preventive work data. The
data reflects the asset performance during that time and from this tasks are then
proposed to restore/prevent failures.

Figure 1.
Maintenance optimisation
framework
JQME
14,3

276

Figure 2.
Maintenance prioritisation

Strategic decisions are made with reference to asset performance data. Together with
other data such as enterprise financial performance data, strategic output target and
tolerable risk target, senior management will need to determine the budget and
available outage time for planned maintenance within a given period. With these
strategic policies in place, the next step is to evaluate and prioritise each maintenance
task. This can be done with the use of the proposed indices. These proposed indices
evaluate each maintenance task’s cost-effectiveness and prioritisation of maintenance
can then take place.
3.1 The maintenance investment index A maintenance
The maintenance investment index (MII) is a measure of how maintenance can bring
return in terms of reduction in risk cost over the amount spends on resources to
prioritisation
support the maintenance work. MII is defined as: approach
Return_from_maintenance
MII ¼ ð1Þ
Maintenance_Spending 277
The return in maintenance is viewed as the reduction in the risk dimension cost at a
given period of time. The maintenance spending is the cost of resources for the
maintenance actions plus the cost of loss of operation (ODC).
DRDC
MII ¼ ð2Þ
Re DC þ ODC
The risk cost is a function of resources cost. The main controllable variable in the
optimisation problem is the resources cost which will relate to things such as the
training and preparedness of the personnel and the quality of the maintenance. The
MII ensures that the objective of prioritising maintenance is to ensure the maximum
return on maintenance investment is achieved in the form of risk reduction. In addition,
the loss of production as measured by the output dimension cost, ODC, is preferably to
be zero unless the cost can be justifiable by a large reduction in risk. The prioritisation
of maintenance can be viewed as an optimisation problem where the objective function
is:
Maximise:
X
MIIk ð3Þ
k

Subjected to constraints:
X
Re DCk # B ð4Þ
k

For ODC ! 0
X
MDTk # NOT ð5Þ
k

3.2 Other indices

The maintenance investment index (MII) prioritises maintenance that is of best return.
In this paper we propose that it is also worth considering variations in the constraints
of equation (4) and equation (5), which may not be absolute – variations may be
accepted if there is adequate business justification. For this purpose, the time index (TI)
and budget index (BI) are introduced.
3.2.1 Output targets and time index (TI). The time index reflects how long it takes to
complete the maintenance task with respect to the planned outage time. It is an
indicator of the time dependency of a particular action as compare to other
maintenance for a particular asset maintenance program. The equation is given below:
JQME the sum of the maintenance downtimes for task k (MDTk) is divided by the planned
14,3 non-operating time (NOT) for the asset at that period.
P
MDTk
k
TI ¼ ð6Þ
NOT
278
3.2.2 Resources dimension target and the budgetary index (BI). The resources
dimension target is constrained by the budget. It is the money allocated for
maintenance and replacement projects within a given period of time, which limits the
level of resources that can be consumed. Budget is prepared by the financial
department on a year-by-year basis and is the amount of money given to the asset
manager to maintain the assets and to spend on purchasing necessary resources to
support asset maintenance. The budgetary index is a parameter concerned with the
cost ratio of a maintenance task to the given budget. This is a measure of the portion of
funds that is consumed by the maintenance task.

Re DC
BI ¼ ð7Þ
B

3.3 Approach to prioritising maintenance

All tasks can be evaluated and ranked according to MII, BI and TI. The list of tasks is
then used to formulate the maintenance plan for that given period according to the
availability of time and resources. The objective is to ensure maximum MII (equation 3)
is achieved under stated constraints (equations (4) and (5)). The process of maintenance
prioritisation can be summarised as follows:
(1) Strategic decisions made at senior managerial level mandate the enterprise
output targets, allowable risks and budget.
(2) Data obtained from asset database reports the company’s production asset
performance.
(3) Weak areas requiring maintenance and restoration work can be highlighted
through data analysis. Maintenance tasks (or packages) are formulated and
proposed.
(4) Indices (MII, BI and TI) will be calculated and ranked.
(5) Three indices will be considered and maintenance will be prioritised. The three
indices are required because integrated decision-making requires a balance to
all dimensions. MII alone only gives an indication of how financially effective is
a particular maintenance without taking into account of the time required and
also the proportion of money spent within a given budget. The means of
balancing the three indices can not necessarily be done in mathematically valid
ways. So a semi-quantitative process based on ranking is used.
(6) If not all tasks can be carried out due to time or budgetary constraints, tasks
will be added to maintenance plan according to its priority rank for the given
period.
4. Maintenance effectiveness A maintenance
The major challenge in maintenance prioritisation is quantifying the return on prioritisation
investment for a specific maintenance task. The return on maintenance investment is
viewed as the reduction in risk cost in this research (see equation (2)). There are approach
number of ways to reduce the failure frequency and one of which is through
maintenance. The question is by how much a maintenance action is able to restore life
to the system. As discussed in the literature review, the concept of imperfect 279
maintenance was first developed by Chaudhuri and Sahu (1977). Since then, a number
of researchers considered the concept in the development of maintenance optimisation
models. However, to the best of the author’s knowledge, there is no research reporting
on how to quantify the effectiveness of maintenance in restoring life to the system.

4.1 Types of maintenance

To quantify maintenance effectiveness, it is first needed to understand the different
types of maintenance available. Different maintenance action has different effect on the
asset. These can be categorised into three major types, namely:
(1) Replacement or repair (perfect or near-perfect maintenance).
(2) Service (imperfect maintenance):
.
replacing small parts (filters);
.
cleaning and lubrication.
(3) Inspection (nil maintenance).

Perfect maintenance returns component’s condition to as-good-as new. Only

replacement (and good repair) falls into this category. (Mistakes can be made in this
process, which means that we also may have to consider this process as near-perfect
maintenance). Imperfect maintenance returns system life to somewhere in between of
as good as new and as-bad-as old condition without maintenance. The magnitude of
the change to risk cost before and after maintenance depends very much on the type of
maintenance carried out as shown in Table I. The reduction in risk is also affected by
factors such as availability of spare parts, skills and training of personnel as well as the
quality of maintenance work.

Type of
maintenance action Action Effect on the life system

Replacement or Replacing a component (regardless of Return the life of component to as good

repair condition) with a new one
Service Cleaning, lubrication, replacement of
filters, coolant, corrosion prevention
Inspection The use of human senses or apparatus
to examine the measure condition of
the component
as new
Partially restore life to component till
next service interval
No change. Condition of the component
is determined to allow decision of its Table I.
suitability to continue operation till Types of maintenance
next service interval or urgent need to and their effect on the life
perform replacement or service of the asset
JQME 5. Numerical example
14,3 A system consisting of five components in series is considered. Five maintenance
packages, each contain a number of tasks, are allocated to maintain these components.
Table II illustrates the required (assumed) input parameters. A Weibull model with
parameters b and E is used to model the time dependant reliability of the component
(see notation).
280 It is assumed that the man hour cost per hour is $100 and the current age of the
system is 10,000 hours, annual plan outage time of 1,000 hours.

5.1 Methods of prioritising maintenance

The means of combining MII, TI and BI must be considered. The following is a
qualitative idea of how to do this. Indices for all maintenance tasks will be calculated
and ranked. MII is ranked from highest to lowest, BI and TI is ranked from lowest to
highest. Higher MII reflect higher return and better cost-effectiveness of a particular
maintenance. Lower BI and TI mean lower cost and less time consuming. As an
example, the numerical ranks will be averaged which means that each index is given
the same weighting. A priority number will be assigned based on the calculated
averaged rank. Higher priority tasks reflect that the task is generally of higher MII,
lower in cost and less time consuming. The priority ranking for this example is given
in Table III.

5.2 Selecting maintenance tasks

5.2.1 Method 1: Budget constraint. Supposing the budget allocated for a given year is
$25,0000, it will not be possible to perform all maintenance. Therefore, some
maintenance has to be cancelled or delayed unless a higher budget is allocated. If
downtime is not a dominant factor, the enterprise can carry out as much maintenance
as possible given that it stays within the budget. To stay within the given budget only
MP1, MP2 and MP5 can be carried out giving a total cost of $240,000 and downtime of
1,050 hours. MP1 is preferred to MP4, which both have the same priority of averaged
ranked is because MP1 has a higher MII (see Table IV).
5.2.2 Method 2: Time constraint. Downtime can be a very significant cost
component for enterprises such as power generation industry where the loss of output
cost can be serval hundred thousand dollars per day of shutdowns. Exceeding the
shutdown time allocated can result in significant outages cost and prioritisation of
maintenance is needed to be carried out to ensure the highest return on investments
tasks are carried out first.
Supposing that the annual planned shutdown time allocated for a given year is
1,000 hours (about 42 days), and assuming that each maintenance package must be
carried out separately due to asset resources and access, not all maintenance can be
carried out. Based on priority Table V, the maintenance to be carried out are MP2 and
MP5. With 400 hours available downtime more maintenance can be carried out. The
next higher MII package is MP1 and MP3, but both take a longer time and there is not
enough shutdown time available. Thus MP4 will be included and result in a total
shutdown time of 1000 hours and $200,000.
5.2.3 Method 3: Budget and time constraints. Consider the situation where both
budget and shutdown time are constraints, the total budget allocated is $200,000 and
planned outage time permitted is 850 hours for a given year. To stay within the given
Maintenance packages Time (man hour) Downtime Component Resources cost t after maintenance b E Cost per breakdown

MP1 600 600 1 50,000 5,000 1.5 30,000 500,000

MP2 300 150 2 20,000 3,000 1.8 25,000 150,000
MP3 500 500 3 60,000 0 2 50,000 100,000
MP4 400 400 4 30,000 5,000 2.3 40,000 80,000
MP5 300 300 5 50,000 5,000 2.5 30,000 500,000
prioritisation
approach
A maintenance

Example data table

281

Table II.
 14,3

282
JQME

Table III.

priority table
A possible maintenance
Rank
Downtime Cost per breakdown Cost per package
Maintenance packages (hours) (,000) (,000) MII BI TI MII BI TI Average rank Priority

MP1 600 500 110 0.3367 0.44 0.6 3 4 5 4 4

MP2 150 150 50 0.5621 0.2 0.15 2 1 1 1.33 1
MP3 500 100 110 0.0637 0.44 0.5 4 4 4 4 4
MP4 400 80 70 0.0564 0.28 0.4 5 2 3 3.33 3
MP5 300 500 80 0.5676 0.32 0.3 1 3 2 2 2
 Recourses cost Average rank:
Maintenance packages (Man hour þ resources) MII BI Rank MII Rank BI MII and BI Priority MII and BI

MP1 110,000 0.3367 0.44 3 4 3.5 3

MP2 50,000 0.5621 0.2 2 1 1.5 1
MP3 110,000 0.0637 0.44 4 4 4 5
MP4 70,000 0.0564 0.28 5 2 3.5 3
MP5 80,000 0.5676 0.32 1 3 2 2
prioritisation
approach
A maintenance

table only using

Maintenance priority

MII and BI
283

Table IV.
 14,3

284
JQME

Table V.

MII and TI
table only using
Maintenance priority
Time Average rank:
Maintenance packages (man hour) MII TI Rank MII Rank TI MII and TI Priority MII and TI

MP1 600 0.3367 0.6 3 5 4 3

MP2 300 0.5621 0.15 2 1 1.5 1
MP3 500 0.0637 0.5 4 4 4 3
MP4 400 0.0564 0.4 5 3 4 3
MP5 300 0.5676 0.3 1 2 1.5 1
constraints, referring to priority table – Table III, MP2, MP4 and MP5 are carried out A maintenance
with a total cost of $200,000 and 850 hours. Packages MP2 and MP5 both have a prioritisation
priority number 1 and other packages have the same priority number 3. Carrying out
MP2 and MP3 require a cost of 130,000 and need 450 hours where the budget and time approach
are not fully utilised. Going through the list of priority number, all other packages have
the same priority because their respective averaged rank is the same. MP4 is chosen
due to its cost and time to repair is best fitted to fully utilise the given time and 285
resources.

5.3 Ranking maintenance plans

The ranking method proposed in this section extends to ranking different
combinations of packages, i.e. different maintenance plans. Each plan MII, BI and
TI is calculated for each plan by summing up the plan’s packages MII, BI and TI. Then
rank MII from highest to lowest, and rank both BI and TI from lowest to highest.
Ranking MII from highest to lowest seeks for the plan with best reduction in risk over
cost. Ranking BI and TI from lowest to highest seeks for plans with lower cost to
budget ratio and time ratio. The average rank value will then be calculated and the
plan with lowest score will have a ranking of 1.
The results in Table VI show that the best plan to carry is plan25 as oppose to
plan245 suggested by previous section. The ranking approach suggested by this
section rank all the plans according to the MII, BI and TI. The choice of plan25 will
results in a total cost of $31228 per year, where the RDC is $18,228 per year. This choice
have not fully utilised the time and budget available but it is the best averaged score
plan. The choice of plan245 however has fully utilised the budget as well as time, but is
more expensive, having a total cost of $378331 per year but with a lower risk of
$178331 per year. This plan has a global ranking 4 out of all possible plans. Exhaustive
method is applied here. For solving larger problems, dynamic programming tools can
be used.

5.4 Maximum risk tolerance level

Some production companies such as those operating expensive or dangerous machines
(such as aircraft) might be interested in ensuring that a risk tolerable level is not
exceeded and is preparing to invest more in maintenance and other measures to reduce
the risk cost. In such cases, the challenge is to ensure maximum allocable risk is not
exceeded with minimum resources and outages costs.
The maintenance prioritisation decision-making framework is given in Figure 3.
The asset maintenance database collects and records different types of data, which
triggered different maintenance tasks. Prioritisation indices are evaluated and ranked.
Tasks will be added to the maintenance program until risk target is reached. The
maintenance program required resources and time which will be checked and compare
with budget and time to see if the total cost and total time exceeded the enterprise
budget and time restriction. If the budget and/or the total required outages time
exceeds enterprise requirement, it will be fed back to senior maintenance to make
appropriate decision, i.e. adjust enterprise budget and output requirement or to face
higher risk during operation if increasing budget and extending outage time is not
possible.
JQME
Rank Rank Rank Average rank Maintenance plan
14,3 Packages MII BI TI MII BI TI score ranking

1 0.34 0.55 0.71 28 4 7 13.00 10

2 0.56 0.25 0.18 24 1 1 8.67 2
3 0.06 0.55 0.59 30 4 5 13.00 10
286 4 0.06 0.35 0.47 31 2 3 12.00 7
5 0.57 0.40 0.35 23 3 2 9.33 3
12 0.90 0.80 0.88 16 9 10 11.67 6
13 0.40 1.10 1.29 26 16 19 20.33 26
14 0.39 0.90 1.18 27 11 16 18.00 19
15 0.90 0.95 1.06 15 13 13 13.67 14
23 0.63 0.80 0.76 20 9 8 12.33 8
24 0.62 0.60 0.65 22 6 6 11.33 4
25 1.13 0.65 0.53 8 7 4 6.33 1
34 0.12 0.90 1.06 29 11 13 17.67 18
35 0.63 0.95 0.94 19 13 11 14.33 15
45 0.62 0.75 0.82 21 8 9 12.67 9
123 0.96 1.35 1.47 12 23 22 19.00 22
124 0.96 1.15 1.35 14 17 20 17.00 16
125 1.47 1.20 1.24 4 19 17 13.33 12
134 0.46 1.45 1.76 25 24 27 25.33 31
135 0.97 1.50 1.65 11 25 25 20.33 26
145 0.96 1.30 1.53 13 21 23 19.00 22
234 0.68 1.15 1.24 18 17 17 17.33 17
235 1.19 1.20 1.12 6 19 15 13.33 12
245 1.19 1.00 1.00 7 15 12 11.33 4
345 0.69 1.30 1.41 17 21 21 19.67 24
1234 1.02 1.70 1.94 10 28 29 22.33 29
1235 1.53 1.75 1.82 2 29 28 19.67 24
1345 1.02 1.85 2.12 9 30 30 23.00 30
Table VI. 2345 1.25 1.55 1.59 5 26 24 18.33 20
Ranking of maintenance 1245 1.52 1.55 1.71 3 26 26 18.33 20
plans by exhaustive table 12345 1.59 2.10 2.29 1 31 31 21.00 28

5.4.1 The cost distribution. To gain a better understanding between the risk versus
resources cost, it is necessary to obtain the relationship between the respective risk and
resources spending for each plan. In order to do this, the “exhaustive method” is
implemented. The exhaustive method allows all the possible plans (combination of
different maintenance packages) to be plotted which will assist in the understanding of
the costing structure. In this example, there are five packages and thus in total there
are 32 possible plans. (i.e. no maintenance, any 1 package, any 2 packages, any 3
packages, any 4 packages, all packages) The risk dimension cost profile versus
resources dimension cost (ReDC) is given in Figure 4 with the means of exhaustive
method. With the given scenario of 5.2.3, i.e. a given budget of $200,000, the risk
tolerance target enforced by the enterprise cannot be achieved.
To achieve the risk tolerance target, other plans are needed. The best plan will be
the plan that is below the minimum risk target line and the point as far left as possible
on the horizontal axis (i.e. cheapest to achieving the risk tolerance target), which for
this case the plan requires addition $40,000 and extra 250 hours.
 A maintenance
prioritisation
approach

287

Figure 3.
Decision making
framework for prioritising
maintenance

If the budget cannot be increased, the best plan available that is below the budget is
plan 245 (i.e. packages 2, 4 and 5) where the enterprise must prepared to face a higher
risk of $173,350/year with a resources cost of $190,000/year. There are several plans
that can achieve the risk target but all costs more than the given budget.

6. Conclusion
Production asset maintenance activities need to be prioritised to ensure that tasks that
maximise the return on investment will be performed first. However planned outage
time and budget is normally limited.
JQME
14,3

288

Figure 4.
Risk Target plot
This paper developed a maintenance prioritisation approach that addresses the basic A maintenance
maintenance questions of “What is the best maintenance to do in terms of return on
investment given that there are time and budget constraints?” The proposed
prioritisation
prioritising approach can be applied to rank asset maintenance tasks based on the approach
required emphasis on return on maintenance investment, the time and budget or risk.

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Alfares, H.K., Khursheed, S.N. and Noman, S.M. (2005), “Integrating quality and maintenance
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Cassady, C.R. and Kutanoglu, E. (2005), “Integrating preventive maintenance planning and
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Corresponding author
Allen S.B. Tam can be contacted at: sbatam@yahoo.com.hk; allen.tam@silcar.com.au

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