Maintenance, repair and operations or maintenance, repair, and overhaul involves fixing any sort
of mechanical, plumbing or electrical device should it become out of order or broken.
It also includes performing routine actions which keep the device in working order or
prevent trouble from arising.
MRO may be defined as, "All actions which have the objective of retaining or restoring
an item in or to a state in which it can perform its required function.
The actions include the combination of all technical and corresponding administrative,
managerial, and supervision actions."
MRO operations can be categorised by whether the product remains the property of the customer,
i.e. a service is being offered, or whether the product is bought by the reprocessing
organisation and sold to any customer wishing to make the purchase.
In the former case it may be a backshop operation within a larger organization or smaller operation.
The former of these represents a closed loop supply chain and usually has the scope of
maintenance, repair or overhaul of the product.
The latter of the categorisations is an open loop supply chain and is typified by refurbishment
and remanufacture.
The main characteristic of the closed loop system is that the demand for a product is
matched with the supply of a used product.
Neglecting asset write-offs and exceptional activities the total population of the product
between the customer and the service provider remains constant.
Engineering
In telecommunication, commercial real estate and engineering in general, the term maintenance
has the following meanings: Any activity – such as tests, measurements,
replacements, adjustments and repairs — intended to retain or restore a functional unit in
or to a specified state in which the unit can perform its required functions.
For material — all action taken to retain material in a serviceable condition or to
restore it to serviceability.
It includes inspection, testing, servicing, classification as to serviceability, repair,
rebuilding, and reclamation.
For material — all supply and repair action taken to keep a force in condition to carry
out its mission.
For material — the routine recurring work required to keep a facility in such condition
that it may be continuously used, at its original or designed capacity and efficiency for its
intended purpose.
Manufacturers and Industrial Supply Companies often refer to MRO as opposed to Original
Equipment Manufacturer.
OEM includes any activity related to the direct manufacture of goods, where MRO refers to
any maintenance and repair activity to keep a manufacturing plant running.
Industrial supply companies can generally be sorted into two types:
the ones who cater to the MRO market generally carry a broad range of items such as fasteners,
conveyors, cleaning goods, plumbing, and tools to keep a plant running.
OEM supply companies generally provide a smaller range of goods in much larger quantities with
much lower prices, selling materials that will be regularly consumed in the manufacturing
process to create the finished item.
Maintenance types Generally speaking, there are three types
of maintenance in use: Preventive maintenance, where equipment is
maintained before break down occurs.
This type of maintenance has many different variations and is subject of various researches
to determine best and most efficient way to maintain equipment.
Recent studies have shown that Preventive maintenance is effective in preventing age
related failures of the equipment.
For random failure patterns which amount to 80% of the failure patterns, condition monitoring
proves to be effective.
Operational maintenance, where equipment is maintained in using.
Corrective maintenance, where equipment is maintained after break down.
This maintenance is often most expensive because worn equipment can damage other parts and
cause multiple damages.
Preventive maintenance
Preventive maintenance is maintenance performed in an attempt to avoid failures, unnecessary
production loss and safety violations.
The effectiveness of a preventive maintenance schedule depends on the RCM analysis which
it was based on, and the ground rules used for cost-effectivity.
Corrective maintenance
Corrective maintenance is probably the most commonly used approach, but it is easy to
see its limitations.
When equipment fails, it often leads to downtime in production.
In most cases, this is costly business.
Also, if the equipment needs to be replaced, the cost of replacing it alone can be substantial.
It is also important to consider health, safety and environment issues related to malfunctioning
equipment.
Corrective maintenance can be defined as the maintenance which is required when an item
has failed or worn out, to bring it back to working order.
Corrective maintenance is carried out on all items where the consequences of failure or
wearing out are not significant and the cost of this maintenance is much greater than preventive
maintenance.
Corrective maintenance is the program focused on the regular task that will maintain all
the critical machinery and the system in optimum operating conditions.
The major objectives of the program are to 1.Eliminating breakdown 2.Eliminating deviation
3.Eliminating unnecessary repairs 4.Optimize all the critical planned system
Reliability centered maintenance
Reliability centered maintenance is an engineering framework that enables the definition of a
complete maintenance regime.
It regards maintenance as the means to maintain the functions a user may require of machinery
in a defined operating context.
As a discipline it enables machinery stakeholders to monitor, assess, predict and generally
understand the working of their physical assets.
This is embodied in the initial part of the RCM process which is to identify the operating
context of the machinery, and write a Failure Mode Effects and Criticality Analysis.
Tkhe second part of the analysis is to apply the "RCM logic", which helps determine the
appropriate maintenance tasks for the identified failure modes in the FMECA.
Once the logic is complete for all elements in the FMECA, the resulting list of maintenance
is "packaged", so that the periodicities of the tasks are rationalised to be called up
in work packages; it is important not to destroy the applicability of maintenance in this phase.
Lastly, RCM is kept live throughout the "in-service" life of machinery, where the effectiveness
of the maintenance is kept under constant review and adjusted in light of the experience
gained.
MRO software
In many organizations because of the number of devices or products that need to be maintained
or the complexity of systems, there is a need to manage the information with software packages.
This is particularly the case in aerospace, military installations, large plants and ships.
These software tools help engineers and technicians in increasing the system availability and
reducing costs and repair times as well as reducing material supply time and increasing
material availability by improving supply chain communication.
As MRO involves working with an organization’s products, resources, suppliers and customers,
MRO packages have to interface with many enterprise business software systems.
One of the functions of such software is the configuration of bills of materials or BOMs,
taking the component parts list from engineering and manufacturing and updating it from "as
designed“ through "as built”, "as delivered", “as maintained”, and “as used”.
Another function is project planning logistics, for example identifying the critical path
on the list of tasks to be carried out to calculate turnaround times.
Other tasks that software can perform: Planning operations,
Managing execution of events, Management of assets,
Knowledge-base data on: Maintenance service history,
Serial numbered parts, Reliability data: MTBF, MTTB, MTBR,
Maintenance and repair documentation and best practices,
Warranty/guarantee documents.
Many of these tasks are addressed in computerized maintenance management systems.
Data standards have been developed around these activities, most notably EAMXML and
MIMOSA.
MRO Goods and Services MRO goods are typically defined as any goods
used in the creation of a product but not in the final product itself.
Examples include: The machinery used to make a product
Spare parts for the machinery that creates the product
Items used to maintain the facility in which the product is made
MRO services such as ecommerce websites provide access to millions of products at the click
of a button.
Previously customers would have had to buy goods via a catalog or parts supplier over
the phone.
New forms for online businesses in the MRO space are making the access to goods and services
more convenient.
See also Aircraft maintenance
Auto maintenance Darning
Delta TechOps Design for repair
Logistics center Maintainability
Product Lifecycle Management RAMS
Reliability centered maintenance Reliability engineering
Remanufacturing Scheduled maintenance
Total productive maintenance References