Design for Maintenance: : An interview based survey

Abstract: Design for maintenance is concerned with achieving good design that considers the general care and maintenance of equipment and the repair actions that follow a failure. This thesis gives an overview about the theoretical background of maintainability respectively design for maintenance and presents how companies in the Swedish manufacturing sector are dealing with design for maintenance for their machines. This work discusses the behavior and dealing with the topic design for maintenance from the perspective of the users.In order to answer the research questions of this thesis, a literature review and expert interviews were used. Industrial experts from maintenance departments of Swedish industrial companies answered the interview questions for this research which serve as a foundation for the results and the analysis.The results of the research questions and the conclusion are summarized on the basis of the expert interviews. It enables the reader to know to what extent design for maintenance is considered, how important it is, how communication affects the design and therefore the maintainability and finally a rating of how important a range of maintainability attributes are for them.For the Swedish manufacturing industry design for maintenance is a topic which is considered as important, but a lot of effort in improving maintainability due to the design is not conducted. Improving maintainability with the help of adapting maintainability concepts or recording data especially for design issues are examples for the potential. Swedish companies have the opportunity to create an appropriate relation to the suppliers to utilize benefits in order to improve maintainability. The rating of maintainability attributes turns out as very difficult for the interview experts because of the strong relation between them.