Deriving an empirical model for machinery prioritization: Mechanical systems maintenance

The maintenance of mechanical systems plays a significant role in production and manufacturing settings. In this context, prioritization of machinery is vital for minimizing the economic burden due to higher maintenance cost, loss of production, potential damage to health, safety and environment. Different production and/or manufacturing firms use different approaches to mitigate the aforementioned. These approaches are tailor-made to fit a selected production or manufacturing operation and the firm´s requirements, creating a difficulty in generalizing their utilization in a generic application. Hence, it is vital to analyze the existing models that have been used for the machinery prioritization and derive a generic model, enabling it to be utilized in a generic application. This manuscript illustrates a study carried out in three firms which utilize machinery for their production and/or manufacturing activities. The empirical models that have been employed for machinery prioritization by the aforementioned firms were analyzed and a generic empirical model has been derived. The empirical model has been validated by a randomly selected firm and one item of its machinery.