37. Maintenance and Repair

Probably the most important step in defining a product's maintenance requirements is to establish a maintenance philosophy that is sympathetic to the particular industry maintenance practices and traditions.

Product Maintenance Philosophy

A maintenance philosophy will normally be based upon an understanding of the following factors: who will maintain the product; user down time costs; maintenance call out costs; product reliability objectives; product availability objectives.

The product's maintenance philosophy should consider what mix of programmed and ad hoc maintenance action is expected for the product, what the replacement spares/parts supply objectives are for the product, what the test equipment investment objective is for maintenance organisations, what technical support services will be necessary or expected by maintenance organisations and what the repair philosophy for a faulty product is to be.

Basic Maintenance Requirements

Maintenance parameters that need to be identified within any product definition include: product/system modularity requirements, product "state" retention under maintenance and repair action, maintenance damage protection, normal maintenance practices (such as hot plugging), maintenance indicators such as failure indicators, self test diagnostics and fault or failure logging.