Chapter 5: Corrective Maintenance
Types
Corrective Maintenance Steps, Downtime
Components, and Time
Reduction Strategies at System Level
Corrective Maintenance Measures
Median Active Corrective Maintenance Time
Maximum Active Corrective Maintenance
Time
Corrective Maintenance Mathematical Models
INTRODUCTION
• Thus, repair or corrective maintenance is an important component of
maintenance activity.
• Corrective maintenance may be defined as the remedial action carried out
due to failure or deficiencies discovered during preventive maintenance, to
repair an equipment/item to its operational state.
• Usually, corrective maintenance is an unscheduled maintenance action,
basically composed of unpredictable maintenance needs that cannot be
preplanned or programmed on the basis of occurrence at a particular time.
• The action requires urgent attention that must be added, integrated with, or
substituted for previously scheduled work items.
• This incorporates compliance with “prompt action” field changes,
rectification of deficiencies found during equipment/item operation, and
performance of repair actions due to incidents or accidents.
CORRECTIVE MAINTENANCE TYPES
• Corrective maintenance may be classified into five
major categories as shown in Fig. These are: fail-
repair, salvage, rebuild, overhaul, and servicing.
These categories are described below:
1. Fail-repair: The failed item is restored to its
operational state.
2. Salvage: This element of corrective maintenance
is concerned with disposal of non-repairable material
and use of salvaged material from non-repairable
equipment/item in the repair, overhaul, or rebuild
programs.
3. Rebuild: This is concerned with restoring an item to a
standard as close as possible to original state in performance,
life expectancy, and appearance. This is achieved through
complete disassembly, examination of all components, repair
and replacement of worn/unserviceable parts as per original
specifications and manufacturing tolerances, and reassembly
and testing to original production guidelines.
4. Overhaul: Restoring an item to its total serviceable state as
per maintenance serviceability standards, using the “inspect
and repair only as appropriate” approach.
5. Servicing: Servicing may be needed because of the
corrective maintenance action, for example, engine repair can
lead to crankcase refill, welding on, etc. Another example
could be that the replacement of an air bottle may require
system recharging.
FIGURE : Types of corrective maintenance
CORRECTIVE MAINTENANCE STEPS,
DOWNTIME COMPONENTS AND TIME
REDUCTION STRATEGIES AT SYSTEM LEVEL
• Different authors have laid down different sequential steps for
performing corrective maintenance.
• For example, Reference 2 presents nine steps (as applicable):
localize, isolate, adjust, disassemble, repair, interchange,
reassemble, align, and checkout.
• Reference 3 presents seven steps (as applicable): localization,
isolation, disassembly, interchange, reassemble, alignment,
and checkout.
• For our purpose, we assume that corrective maintenance is
composed of five major sequential steps, as shown in Fig.
These steps are: fault recognition, localization, diagnosis,
repair, and checkout.
• The major corrective maintenance downtime
components are active repair time, administrative
and logistic time, and delay time.
The active repair time is made up of the
following subcomponents:
• Preparation time
• Fault location time
• Spare item obtainment time
• Fault correction time
• Adjustment and calibration time
• Checkout time
FIGURE : Corrective maintenance sequential steps.
• Reduction in corrective maintenance time is useful to
improve maintenance effectiveness.
Some strategies for reducing the system-level corrective
maintenance time are as follows:
• Efficiency in fault recognition, location, and isolation:
Past experience indicates that in electronic equipment,
fault isolation and location consume the most time within
a corrective maintenance activity.
• In the case of mechanical items, often the largest
contributor is repair time. Factors such as well designed
fault indicators, good maintenance procedures, well-
trained maintenance personnel, and an unambiguous
fault isolation capability are helpful in lowering
corrective maintenance time.
• Effective interchangeability: Good physical and
functional interchangeability is useful in removing
and replacing parts/items, reducing maintenance
downtime, and creating a positive impact on spares
and inventory needs.
• Redundancy: This is concerned with designing in
redundant parts that can be switched in at the
moment of need so the equipment/system continues
to operate while the faulty part is being repaired.
• In this case the overall maintenance workload may
not be reduced, but the equipment/system downtime
could be impacted significantly.
• Effective accessibility: Often a significant amount
of time is spent accessing the failed part. Proper
attention to accessibility during design can help
reduce part accessibility time and, in turn, the
corrective maintenance time.
• Human factor considerations: Attention paid to
human factors during design in areas such as
readability of instructions, size, shape, and weight
of components, selection and placement of dials
and indicators, size and placement of access, gates,
and readability, and information processing aids
can help reduce corrective maintenance time
significantly.
CORRECTIVE MAINTENANCE
MEASURES
• There are various measures associated with
corrective maintenance.
• MEAN CORRECTIVE MAINTENANCE
TIME
• Past experience indicates that probability distributions of
corrective maintenance times follow exponential, normal,
and lognormal.
• For example, in the case of electronic equipment with a
good built-in test capability and a rapid remove and
replace maintenance concept, often exponential
distribution is assumed.
• In the case of mechanical or electro-mechanical hardware,
usually with a remove and replace maintenance concept,
the normal distribution is often applicable.
• Normally, the lognormal distribution is applicable to
electronic equipment that does not possess built-in test
capability.
MEDIAN ACTIVE CORRECTIVE
MAINTENANCE T IME
• This normally provides the best average location of the sample
data and is the 50th percentile of all values of repair time. It may
be said that median corrective maintenance time is a measure of
the time within which 50% of all corrective maintenance can be
accomplished.
• The computation of this measure depends on the distribution
representing corrective maintenance times. Consequently, the
median of the log normally distributed corrective maintenance
times is given by
MAXIMUM ACTIVE CORRECTIVE
MAINTENANCE TIME
• This measures the time needed to accomplish all potential
corrective maintenance actions up to a given percentage,
frequently the 90th or 95th percentiles.
• For example, in the case of 90th percentile, the maximum
corrective maintenance time is the time within which 90%
of all maintenance actions can be accomplished.
• The distribution of corrective maintenance times dictates the
calculation of the maximum corrective maintenance time.
• In the case of lognormally distributed corrective
maintenance times, the maximum active corrective
maintenance time is given by:
CORRECTIVE MAINTENANCE
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
• Over the years a vast amount of literature has been published
that directly or indirectly concerns corrective maintenance.
• This presents a number of mathematical models taken from
the published literature. These models take into consideration
the item failure and corrective maintenance rates, and can be
used to predict item/system probability of being in failed state
(i.e., undergoing repair), availability, mean time to failure,
and so on.
MODEL I
• This mathematical model represents a system that
can either be in up (operating) or down (failed) state.
Corrective maintenance is performed on the failed
system to put it back into its operating state. The
system state space diagram is shown in Fig. 5.3.
Equations for the model are subject to the following
assumptions:
• Failure and corrective maintenance rates are constant.
• The repaired system is as good as new.
• System failures are statistically independent.
The following symbols are used to develop equations for the model:
• I = the i th system state, i = 0 (system operating normally), i = 1 (system failed);
• Pi (t) = probability that the system is in state i at time t ;
• λ = system failure rate;
• μC = system corrective maintenance rate.
Using the Markov approach, we write the following two equations for the Fig. 5.3 diagram:
Example
Assume the MTTF of a piece of equipment is 3000
h and its mean corrective maintenance time is 5 h.
Calculate the equipment steady-state availability, if
the equipment failure and corrective maintenance
times are exponentially distributed.
Substituting the given values into Eq. (5.11) yields
There is 99.83% chance that the equipment will be
available for service.
MODEL II
• This mathematical model represents a system that can either be
operating normally or failed in two mutually exclusive failure
modes (i.e., failure modes I and II).
• A typical example of this type of system or device is a fluid flow
valve (i.e., open and close failure modes). Corrective maintenance
is performed from either failure mode of the system to put it back
into its operational state. The system transition diagram is shown
in Fig. 5.4.
The following assumptions are associated with this model:
• The system can fail in two mutually exclusive failure modes.
• The repaired system is as good as new.
• All system failures are statistically independent.
• Failure and corrective maintenance rates are constant.
FIGURE 5.4 System transition diagram
MODEL III
• This mathematical model represents a system that can either be operating normally,
operating in degradation mode, or failed completely. An example of this type of
system could be a power generator, i.e., producing electricity at full capacity, de-
rated capacity, or not at all.
• Corrective maintenance is initiated from degradation and completely failed modes
of the system to repair failed parts. The system state space diagram is shown in Fig.
5.5.
The model is subject to the following assumptions:
• System complete failure, partial failure, and corrective maintenance rates
are constant.
• The operating system can either fail fully or partially. The partially operating system
can stop operating altogether.
• All system failures are statistically independent.
• The repaired system is as good as new.
FIGURE 5.5 System transition diagram.
MODEL IV
• This mathematical model represents a two identical-unit
redundant (parallel) system. At least one unit must operate
normally for system success.
• Corrective maintenance to put it back into its operating state
begins as soon as any one of the units fails. The system state
space diagram is shown in Fig. 5.6.
The following assumptions are associated with the model:
• The system is composed of two independent and identical
units.
• The repaired unit is as good as new.
• No corrective maintenance is performed on the failed system
(i.e., when both units fail).
• Unit failure and corrective maintenance rates are constant.
FIGURE 5.6 Two identical unit redundant system transition
diagram.
