Customer Reviews

Maintenance Engineering Handbook

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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"An Introduction to the Computer in Maintenance" and "Computerized Planning and Scheduling" run the risk of being out of date before the book has long been published.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 ask of experts in these fields.

There is a small section entitled "Sanitation and Housekeeping" that may not be relevant to maintenance engineers or tradespeople, but it is included in keeping with the book's high standard of completeness.

There are a few areas of maintenance engineering that are not covered in this book. In particular, reliability centered maintenance (RCM) and its derivatives are not covered. Reliability modeling techniques such as Weibull Analysis and Root Cause Analysis get mentioned in one brief paragraph in the chapter on vibration analysis, which is a rather odd place for the subject. With all of the recent emphasis on Six Sigma, maybe the thinking was that this would better be handled on a book on that subject. Among the technical sections, there are some fairly common equipment types that are not covered. For example, there is no coverage of the maintenance of hydraulic systems, boilers, PLC's, or distributed control systems.

In spite of these few shortcomings, this is certainly an excellent reference for the maintenance engineer for most facets of the job including planning, financial, organizational, and hands-on technical aspects. The table of contents is as follows:

SECTION 1 - ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT OF THE MAINTENANCE FUNCTION

Chapter 1 - Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Maintenance

Chapter 2 - Operating Policies of Effective Maintenance

Chapter 3 - Area and Centralized Maintenance Control

Chapter 4 - Operating Practices to Reduce Maintenance Work

Chapter 5 - Incentive Payment of Maintenance Workers

Chapter 6 - Reports from Maintenance

Chapter 7 - Maintenance Skills Training

SECTION 2 - THE HORIZONS OF MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT

Chapter 1 - Corrective Maintenance

Chapter 2 - Components of Effective Preventive Maintenance

Chapter 3 - Predictive Maintenance

Chapter 4 - Maintenance Work Order Planning

Chapter 5 - An Introduction to the Computer in Maintenance

Chapter 6 - Computerized Planning and Scheduling

Chapter 7 - Maintenance Stores and Inventory Control

Chapter 8 - Maintenance Storerooms

Chapter 9 - Internet for Maintenance and Engineering

SECTION 3 - ESTABLISHING COSTS AND CONTROL

Chapter 1 - Economics of Preventive Maintenance

Chapter 2 - Work Measurement

Chapter 3 - Rating and Evaluating Maintenance Workers

Chapter 4 - Work Simplification in Maintenance

Chapter 5 - Estimating Repair and Maintenance Costs

SECTION 4 - MAINTENANCE OF PLANT FACILITIES

Chapter 1 - Maintenance of Low-Sloped Membrane Roofs

Chapter 2 - Concrete Industrial Floor Surfaces - Design, Installation, Repair, and Maintenance

Chapter 3 - Painting and Protective Coatings

Chapter 4 - Maintenance and Cleaning of Brick Masonry Structures

Chapter 5 - Maintenance of Elevators and Special Lifts

Chapter 6 - Air-Conditioning Equipment

Chapter 7 - Ventilating Fans and Exhaust Systems

Chapter 8 - Dust-Collecting and Air-Cleaning Equipment

Chapter 9 - Piping

Chapter 10 - Scaffolds and Ladders

SECTION 5 - MAINTENANCE OF MECHANICAL EQUIPMENT

Chapter 1 - Plain Bearings

Chapter 2 - Rolling-Element Bearings

Chapter 3 - Flexible Couplings for Power Transmission

Chapter 4 - Chains for Power Transmission

Chapter 5 - Cranes - Overhead and Gantry

Chapter 6 - Chain Hoists

Chapter 7 - Belt Drives

Chapter 8 - Mechanical Variable-Speed Drives

Chapter 9 - Gear Drives and Speed Reducers

Chapter 10 - Reciprocating Air Compressors

Chapter 11 - Valves

Chapter 12 - Pumps - Centrifugal and Positive Displacement

Section 6 - MAINTENANCE OF ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT

Chapter 1 - Electric Motors

Chapter 2 - Maintenance of Motor Control Components

Chapter 3 - Maintenance of Industrial Batteries (Lead-Acid, Nickel-Cadmium, Nickel-Iron)

Chapter 4 - Illumination

Section 7 - SANITATION AND HOUSEKEEPING

Chapter 1 - Organizing the Sanitation-Housekeeping Personnel

Chapter 2 - Maintaining Plant Sanitation and Housekeeping

Chapter 3 - Industrial Housekeeping

Chapter 4 - Cleaning Industrial Plant Offices

Section 8 - INSTRUMENTS AND RELIABILITY TOOLS

Chapter 1 - Mechanical Instruments for Measuring Process Variables

Chapter 2 - Electrical Instruments for Measuring, Servicing and Testing

Chapter 3 - Vibration - Its Analysis and Correction

Chapter 4 - An Introduction to Thermography

Chapter 5 - Tribology

Section 9 - LUBRICATION

Chapter 1 - The Organization and Management of Lubrication

Chapter 2 - Lubricating Devices and Systems

Chapter 3 - Planning and Implementing a Good Lubrication Program

Section 10 - MAINTENANCE WELDING

Chapter 1 - Arc Welding in Maintenance

Chapter 2 - Gas Welding in Maintenance

Section 11 - CHEMICAL CORROSION CONTROL AND CLEANING

Chapter 1 - Corrosion Control

Chapter 2 - Industrial Chemical Cleaning Methods