Evaluating the Impact of Maintenance Principles and Strategies of a Steel Plant Performance in Nigeria: A Case Study

摘要

This study evaluated the impact of maintenance principles and strategies on the performance ofmachines and equipment used atAladja steel plant formally known as Delta Steel Company (DSC) nowPremium Steel and Mines Limited in Nigeria. The study assesses the impact of maintenance on the output ofsteel production machines and equipment using the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) metric whichprovided holistic measures of manufacturing machines and equipment’s overall operational performance. TheOEE of the plant was evaluated as 39.76% before the implementation of a major scheduled preventivemaintenance initiative and after successful implementation of the scheduled turn-around maintenance program,the computed OEE increased up to 51.22%. The increase in OEE score from 39.76% to 51.22% is a truemeasure of increase in machines and equipment performance that is as a result of the implemented maintenanceinitiative.The improved plant OEE of 51.22% is still far below the world class OEE value of 85% which meansthere is a lot of room for further improvement for machines and equipment utilization and performance. Theresearch revealed that to get higher OEE which means improved productivity, the type of maintenance strategythat is implemented plays significant role in machines and equipment performance. The study recommendsamongst others that the organization should consider full implementation of modern maintenance principlesand strategies like Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) and ReliabilityCentre Maintenance (RCM) to gain OEE’s benefit.