ANTICIPATE, REPAIR, OPTIMISE

First of all, maintenance is the capacity to « Anticipate, Repair and Optimize ». Consequently, maintenance professionals recognize that « an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure ». Indeed, preventive maintenance and research are very important as a costly corrective maintenance means productivity loss.

Maintenance is a strategic part of a company : its main goal is to ensure the proper functioning of production tools. Constantly evolving, particularly now with the booming digital technologies, the challenges of maintenance are research and development, new management practices and production costs reduction. The goal of maintenance is not only to repair but also to anticipate and prevent failures in order to increase productivity level and competitiveness. That is why maintenance has evolved and now combines technological, organizational and relational skills, not to mention the safety aspect which is an essential part of this sector.

Therefore maintenance can be defined as the capacity to optimize the ration between :

• Reliability : for a device, the quality of being able to work or operate under given operating conditions at a given moment.
• Availability : for a device, the quality of being able to work or operate under given operating conditions in a given time-period.
• Maintainability : for a device, the quality of being able to be maintained or repaired so as to complete the required work.
• Safety : for a device, the quality of being able to prevent critical or fatal events