Measures of Effectiveness as Applied to Maintenance Practices

Recent developments in surface ship maintenance strategies have been advanced on the promise of achieving reduced maintenance costs and improving the availability of shipboard systems. Included in the melange of proposed solutions are the Phased Maintenance Concept, Condition Based Maintenance, Expert System Diagnostics, as well as many other variations of these notions. As programs are initiated to evaluate prototype systems, or in some cases install production units, it is crucial that effective measurement procedures be instituted to determine to what extent the respective program goals and objectives are achieved. This paper explores various data sources that offer potential application to evaluation of advanced maintenance concept effectiveness. Also examined are data analysis and reporting techniques to clearly identify the benefits gained from those activities. The authors feel that it is important that the process of effectiveness evaluation, while remaining an objective process, become a part of the maintenance process itself. Maximum use of existing databases and in-place data collection procedures is advocated.