5. Results, Conclusions and Implications
5.6 Criticism of the thesis
I believe that there is no perfect work. There is always room for improvement. Therefore, in the following I discuss some of the points that could have been done in a better way:
x The low response rate achieved in the survey is considered the main serious problem affecting the ability to generalise the results to a larger population. However, since this survey is part of a current project, efforts are being made now to call the surveyed firms and encourage them to respond to the questionnaire.
x Because the research work was performed during a long period and involved two main research projects and other conceptual research work performed at different times, it was not possible to present the research papers and research questions in a chronological order. Therefore, the research papers were numbered according to their relevance to the research questions.
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Appendixes
Appendix (A): Example of a question used
in the survey
M1 How much emphasize is placed on each of the following activities where 1=Not Important and 5=Very Important. Restoring equipment to operation (acute)
Installing new equipment
Keeping the level low in spare parts inventory Having inventory between machines, Work in Process/Progress (WIP)
Decreasing the repair time
Investing in improving the skills and competence of maintenance staff
Use of computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS)
Analysing equipment failure causes and effects Using failure historical data
Off-line Monitoring of critical machinery purchasing (production is stopped during test)
On-line Monitoring of critical machinery (test is done during production)
Performing the maintenance tasks according to the original equipment manufacturer (OEM)
recommendations
Performing the maintenance tasks based on Condition Monitoring
Performing the maintenance tasks based on statistical modelling of failure data
Helping the purchasing department in OEM selection Performing periodic planned replacement
Automatic diagnosis (expert system)
Remote diagnosis (measurements are sent to another places for analyse )
Cross functional groups (for instance improvement groups)
Helping improve the production process Helping design the production process Recording the period and frequency of failures Recording the period and frequency of short stoppages Recording the poor quality rate.
Appendix (B): Factor analysis results for
maintenance activities
Table b1
KMO and Bartlett’s Test for maintenance activitiesKMO and Bartlett's Test
,789 1225,173 325 ,000 Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling
Adequacy. Approx. Chi-Square df Sig. Bartlett's Test of Sphericity
Figure b1
Scree plot used for determining the number of factors extracted from the maintenance activitiesScree Plot
Component Number
25 23 21 19 17 15 13 11 9 7 5 3 1Eigenvalue
8 6 4 2 0Table b2
Rotated Component Matrixa, Communalities, Eigenvalues and Per- centage of Variance Before and After RotationComponent 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Communalities Restoring equipment to operation (acute) -0.01 0.00 -0.12 0.00 0.00 0.64 0.15 0.45 Installing new equipment 0.12 -0.11 0.00 -0.01 0.16 0.73 0.12 0.61
Keeping the level low in spare parts inventory -0.01 0.01 0.00 0.30 -0.01 0.01 0.74 0.65 Having inventory between machines (WIP) -0.18 0.26 0.01 0.15 0.26 0.49 -0.25 0.49
Decreasing the repair time
0.01 0.11 0.16 0.00 0.34 0.23 0.68 0.68
Investing in improving the skills and competence of maintenance staff
0.01 0.33 0.61 -0.01 0.00 0.00 0.44 0.68
Use of (CMMS) -0.01 0.12 0.67 0.01 0.00 -0.13 0.26 0.55
Analysing equipment failure causes and effects
0.38 0.29 0.41 -0.20 0.32 0.11 0.01 0.55
Using failure data 0.26 0.32 0.28 0.00 0.62 0.00 0.18 0.66
Off-line Monitoring 0.19 0.00 0.58 0.41 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.54 On-line Monitoring 0.15 0.18 0.52 0.23 0.28 0.00 -0.23 0.51 Following (OEM) recommendations 0.11 0.00 0.00 0.16 0.80 0.24 0.00 0.73 Performing the maintenance tasks based on CM 0.39 0.00 0.51 0.21 0.23 -0.01 -0.12 0.53 Performing the maintenance tasks based on statistical modelling of failure data 0.10 0.37 0.51 0.16 0.16 0.36 -0.17 0.61 Helping the purchasing department in OEM selection 0.74 -0.01 0.25 0.01 0.01 0.16 -0.10 0.66 Performing periodic planned replacement 0.42 0.13 0.29 -0.01 0.36 0.01 0.21 0.46 Automatic diagnosis (expert system) 0.01 0.25 0.25 0.75 0.10 0.01 0.12 0.72 Remote diagnosis 0.15 0.13 0.11 0.82 0.00 0.00 0.14 0.75
Use of company wide information for diagnosis
0.56 0.13 0.30 0.31 0.11 0.00 0.19 0.56
Cross functional groups (for instance improvement groups)
0.64 0.33 0.12 0.01 0.01 -0.26 0.01 0.61
Helping improve the production process
0.79 0.33 -0.01 0.00 0.01 0.00 0.01 0.75
Helping design the production process
0.62 0.46 -0.01 0.25 0.17 0.11 -0.14 0.73
Recording the period and frequency of failures
0.16 0.84 0.22 0.01 0.18 -0.43 0.16 0.84
Recording the period and frequency of short stoppages
0.22 0.82 0.23 0.11 0.00 0.00 0.12 0.80
Recording the poor quality rate. 0.25 0.73 0.01 0.26 0.00 0.12 0.00 0.68 Annual overhaul 0.35 0.26 0.22 0.20 -0.37 0.48 0.12 0.66 Eigenvalues Before rotation 7.2 1.9 1.8 1.7 1.5 1.4 1.1 After rotation 3.3 3.1 2.7 2.0 1.9 1.8 1.7 % of variance Before rotation 27.7 7.2 7.1 6.3 5.7 5.3 4.1 After rotation 12.6 11.9 10.4 7.8 7.1 6.9 6.6
Notes. Extraction method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method:
Varimax with Kaiser Normalisation a. Rotation converged in 16 iterations.