Maintenance used to be seen as a "lesser evil" to avoid downtime and greater losses, but organizations now realize maintenance has a wider impact. Proper maintenance techniques and management can hugely impact productivity, quality, safety, employee motivation and the overall work environment. The challenge is to balance maximizing equipment performance and uptime with the costs of maintenance needed to achieve those goals.

1. Maintenance From "lesser evil" to a "key area" in a company structure Francisco A. Ferreira – Sep’11

2. To interrupt a production process means losses and costs, at least of an essential and irretrievable resource: time. However if additional resources are needed to reestablish the production process, the picture becomes worse. Thus, each time a machine or equipment has to be stopped for maintenance, even if planned, the feeling is of pure loss! Francisco A. Ferreira – Sep’11

3. The fact is that any equipment is subject to a process of deterioration since its first part or component is built. Besides, if this loss of efficiency or damage may occur due to a misuse or mishandling, the truth is that it will happen naturally during its function performance. Thus, organizations soon realized that to stop before the breakdown was a “lesser evil” within the production process in order to avoid greater losses. Francisco A. Ferreira – Sep’11

4. However, some organizations have also been realizing over the time that maintenance has a wider action range than a simple production downtime reducing. The maintenance techniques and managing improvement as well as the human resources expertise showed that the impact in the productive process and its profitability ( volume and quality ) is huge. On the other hand, the increased focus of companies on issues such as safety and ergonomics , its greater attention to people's motivation and the social climate , has given the chance to see that an efficient maintenance management has also an important influence in these areas. Francisco A. Ferreira – Sep’11

5. Today, more than ever, the challenge of the maintenance management is to find the balance between maximizing the performance and availability of its equipments, with the costs of the needed actions to achieve it. The result is an increase of the production process profitability and the preservation of the company's investments, with more safety and motivation for its stakeholders. Francisco A. Ferreira – Sep’11