Evaluation Of Maintenance Practices In Kenyan Industies

Abstract

Maintenance involves both the planned and unplanned actions that are carried out to retain a system in, or restore it to an acceptable operating condition. Thus, maintenance is defined as a set of activities required to keep the means of production in the desired operating conditions or to restore them to this condition. Maintenance practices is defined as "the systematic activities geared towards the actual execution and improvement of maintenance". It has always been assumed that developing countries practice poor maintenance practices. Thus, it is important to evaluate the maintenance practices in Kenya in order to establish the actual status. This research is aimed at developing an assessment framework for the evaluation of maintenance practices. Further, the framework is applied in assessing the maintenance practices in Kenyan industries. The research was carried out through a survey, using a questionnaire developed to establish the maintenance practices in a number of Kenyan companies. In this survey, the companies were clustered into different categories, namely, service, power generation, food manufacturing and processing, agro/chemical, metal processing, motor vehicle assemblers, transport, maintenance and construction industries. The responses from the survey were analysed. The analysis involved the three aspects of maintenance practices, namely, technical, managerial and human aspects. For each of these aspects, an evaluation index was developed and calculated. Subsequently, the general evaluation index was determined. The general evaluation index showed that Kenyan companies are at the managed level of maintenance practices. This means that maintenance processes are partially planned and highly dependent on the operator experience and competence. At this level, the processes are partially planned and performance depends on the operators' experience and competence. It is recommended that the companies aim at improving the index to the highest level, the optimizing stage. The research has contributed to knowledge' by developing an assessment criteria and establishing the maintenance status in the Kenyan industries.