Design for maintenance: basic concepts and review of literature

This paper endeavours to present basic concepts and an outline of current research in the field of designing products/systems to enable ease of maintenance. The process of product maintenance is often a necessary evil since it ensures smooth performance of equipment, often at the cost of equipment downtime. Products that are easy to maintain entail less downtime. This means that they can be maintained at less expense, in less time and with less effort. There is a considerable amount of mathematical research conducted on this topic. Researchers have tended to focus on evolving mathematical models to predict maintenance schedules, downtime, etc. Much of that research is reactive in nature and is not useful as far as design is concerned. A methodology that enables product design for maintenance is conspicuous by its absence. This paper focuses on research efforts that can be directly helpful in the evolution of such a methodology.