Maintenance Engineering Handbook

This book contains over 1500 pages of figures and often dense text. It is the only book of its kind that I know of written clearly for the degreed maintenance and facilities engineer. This book is an edited work by several dozen authors who are all leading maintenance practitioners and experts in their field. The book covers both management and technical issues associated with the maintenance of the modern physical plant. In reference to management issues, the chapter entitled "Operating Policies of Effective Maintenance" successfully deals with the strategic decisions that Maintenance managers must make, including issues such as whether or not to outsource, shift coverage, whether to decentralize or centralize maintenance, and the use of standard practice sheets and work instructions. The chapter on "Operating Practices to reduce Maintenance Work" provides a basic yet well-formulated introduction to concepts of predictive and preventive maintenance. There is fairly comprehensive coverage of how best to provide incentive payments for maintenance workers, which may or may not be applicable in certain industrial situations. The Chapters "An Introduction to the Computer in Maintenance" and "Computerized Planning and Scheduling" run the risk of being out of date before the book has long been published. However, the principles that these chapters cover remain somewhat timeless, and also provide a useful starting point for those wishing to understand more about these aspects. Newer younger grads in the field will probably already know this material. The Chapters entitled "Maintenance Stores and Inventory Control" and "Maintenance Storerooms" are very well written. They are particularly valuable since this topic gets relatively little attention from maintenance professionals, and these chapters show their importance. The chapter entitled "Work Measurement" should give even experienced planners new ways to look at how they estimate job durations, and the chapter entitled "Work Simplification" introduces standard industrial engineering techniques to maintenance personnel, who often are industrial engineers by training, but sometimes are not. The tools discussed include charting tools and techniques that assist planners in identifying ways to make repair tasks quicker and simpler. Planners will also benefit from reading the chapter "Estimating Repair and Maintenance Costs". The chapters on the technical aspects of maintenance are also well-written, and could be useful both as a reminder for engineers about some fundamental concepts, as well as providing useful information for craftspeople to assist with troubleshooting and ensuring that sound maintenance quality standards are implemented. There is also a very useful introduction to the three main predictive maintenance technologies - vibration analysis, oil analysis and thermography. These sections would equip anyone with a mechanical engineering background to be able to know what questions to a