The financial success or otherwise of a maintenance strategy can be determined realistically only when actual costs are compared with target ‘predicted’ values. This is because, in the absence of accurate cost control mechanisms, maintenance expenditure can exceed capital cost. In order to address this problem, a methodology is presented for predicting life cycle maintenance expenditure over the useful life of tracked hydraulic excavators. First, time series analysis (using a moving centred average) illustrates that the trend in maintenance cost expenditure is difficult to isolate due to large perturbations in periodic unscheduled maintenance. Such expenditure accounts for 92% of total maintenance cost. Second, cumulative costs of maintenance are modelled using a cubic equation, with time (in hours) as the predictor ( x n ) variable. Model performance is robust with a coefficient of determination ( R 2 ) of 0.99 and a mean percentage error (MPE) of minus 3.94. The paper concludes with direction for future research in this field, particularly with respect to expanding the model’s application to machines of various weights, manufacturers and machines operating in other industries, and determination of criteria with which to predict when a plant item will reach the end of its useful life.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Volume (Year): 18 (2000) Issue (Month): 4 (June) Pages: 427-435 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF